Heads – a Canonical Approach*

* Heads – a Greville canonical G. Corbett approach Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey • 1 Relevance to PIPCs • One approach to PIPCs would be that these are constructions in which the • dependent has ‘ ideas above its ’, status taking some head properties. This implies that headedness is a gradient notion. Survey of possible head properties, concentrating on nominal phrases (cf the discussion of headedness in Meakins & Nordlinger (to appear)). • 2 •History important notion for Bloomfield (1933), though it goes back further • behind the development of X-‐‑bar theory (Chomsky 1970, Jackendoff 1977, and compare Kornai & Pullum 1990) • vital part of theoretical syntax since GPSG azdar (G & Pullum 1981, Gazdar, • Klein, Pullum & Sag 1985), and central in HPSG (Pollard & Sag 1994) • the heart of Dependency Grammar (as in Hudson 1984: 75-‐‑79) key idea in typology since Nichols (1986); also Evans & Fenwick (2013) interesting debate between Zwicky and Hudson on criteria, leading to the • volume on headedness (Corbett, Fraser & McGlashan 1993), with contributions by Zwicky, Hudson and others at least since Abney’s thesis (1987), ‘head’ has become increasingly theory-‐‑dependent. I will use ‘nominal phrase’ as a neutral term (NP/DP). • 3 •Canonical heads and all canonical dependents: criteria Quick introduction to canonicity all Basic strategy: a canonical head has possible head properties; similarly a canonical dependent has possible dependent properties. canonical head canonical dependent determines semantic has no impact on semantic semantic properties of phrase properties of phrase determines external has no impact on external external syntax of phrase syntax of phrase syntactic determines internal has no impact on internal internal syntax of phrase syntax of phrase has morphological has morphological marker morphological marker of head of dependent has phonological has phonological marker phonological marker of head of dependent * Figure 1: Canonical heads and dependents The support of the AHRC under grant AH/M010708/1 (Prominent possessors) is gratefully acknowledged. I also thank these colleagues for useful suggestions: Oliver Bond, Patricia Cabredo-‐‑Hofherr, Peter Sells, Nigel Vincent and especially Erich Round. Greville G. Corbett Prominent Internal Possessors SOAS, September 2016 3.1 Semantic The idea of a semantic head goes back at least to Jespersen. Following him, Zwicky (1985: 4) writes: “we could take the head/modifier distinction to be at root semantic: in a combination X+Y, X is the 'semantic head' if, speaking very crudely, X + Y describes a kind of the ” thing described by X. So it is natural to suggest that the head will determine the co-‐‑occurrence restrictions of its phrase. For issues with semantic heads see McGlashan (1993). Ton French (Hulk & Tellier 1999: 183) (1) phénomènedistrait-‐‑e *distrait de fille est your.M.SG phenomenon(M) of daughter(F) COP .3SG bien . ( (M)) quite absent-‐‑minded-‐‑FEM.SG ‘That amazing daughter of yours is quite absent-‐‑minded.’ laquelle French (consultant) (2) Ton phénomène de fille, Elleavec your.M.SG phenomenon(M) of daughter(F) with REL.F.SG je viens de parl-‐‑er ... ... 1SG come.1SG of speak-‐‑INF ... 3SG.FEM ... ‘That amazing daughter of yours, with whom I have just been speaking ... She ...’ (There are various related constructions, where the balance between syntactic and semantic head can differ: recall Koptjevskaja-‐‑Tamm 2001 on pseudo-‐‑ partitives, taken up from an acquisition perspective by Stickney 2007.) Attraction: George Bush (Washington, 23 January 2004): (3) ... the illiteracy level of our children are appalling. Scandinavian ‘pancake sentences’ (Enger 2004, Corbett 2006: 223-‐‑224), Haugen & Enger 2014) god-‐‑t. Norwegian (Bokmål/Nynorsk, Faarlund 1977: 240) (4) Pannekake-‐‑r er pancake-‐‑PL COP good-‐‑N.SG ‘Pancakes is good.’ (‘Eating pancakes is good.’) Nystekt-‐‑e god-‐‑t Norwegian (Bokmål, Enger 2004: 20) (5) pannekake-‐‑r er . new.fried-‐‑PL pancake-‐‑PL COP good-‐‑N.SG ‘Newly-‐‑fried pancakes is good.’ (‘Eating -‐‑ newly fried pancakes is good.’) som grusom-‐‑t Norwegian (Bokmål, Corbett 2006: 223, Hans -‐‑Olav Enger, p. communication) (6) Narkotika, erde -‐‑t for både misbrukere og Narcotic(M)[SG], which COP awful-‐‑N.SG for both addicts and pårørende, skulle aldri vært oppfunnet. relatives.spouses, it-‐‑N.SG should never been invented ‘Drugs, which is awful for both addicts and those close to them, -‐‑ it should never have been invented.’ 2 Greville G. Corbett Prominent Internal Possessors SOAS, September 2016 (7) Constructional mismatches and the Agreement Hierarchy: (Corbett 2006: 208-‐‑224) Agreement relative personal attributive predicate Hierarchy: pronoun pronoun Russian conjoined sg / (PL) (sg) / PL (sg) / PL ((sg)) / PL noun phrases (PL 14%) (PL 71%) Serbian/Croatian/ remnant / (remnant) / French Bosnian complex lower remnant (M.PL) M.PL M.PL noun numeral phrases phrases (M.PL 18%) (M.PL 62%) Norwegian syntactic SEMANTIC SEMANTIC SEMANTIC agreement vs. head HEAD HEAD HEAD default agreement DEFAULT DEFAULT DEFAULT Associatives sg PL no data PL (Talitsk Russian) Note: lower case indicates syntactic agreement, and upper case SEMANTIC AGREEMENT; parentheses indicate a less frequent variant. 3.2 Syntactic It is in syntax that the notion of head is most important. “The head of a constituent/phrase is the element which determines the most important properties of the constituent/phrase. At the same time, the head also determines the composition of the phrase. That is, the head requires certain other elements sent to be pre in the phrase.” Müller (2016: 28) 3.2.1 Numeral phrases in Russian and other Slavonic languages Russian (8) odin žurnal one[M.SG] magazine(M)[SG] ‘one magazine’ (9) odn-‐‑a gazet-‐‑a one-‐‑F.SG newspaper(F)-‐‑SG ‘one newspaper’ (10) odn-‐‑o pis´m-‐‑o one-‐‑N.SG letter(N)-‐‑SG ‘one letter’ (11) odn-‐‑i nožnic-‐‑y one-‐‑PL scissors-‐‑PL ‘one pair of scissors’ 3 Greville G. Corbett Prominent Internal Possessors SOAS, September 2016 odin dva Thus with ‘one’ we see agreement in number and in all three gender values, as we would find with an adjective (only the forms are irregular). The numeral ‘two’ agrees in a more limited way: (12) dv-‐‑a žurnal-‐‑a two-‐‑M.NOM magazine(M)-‐‑SG.GEN ‘two magazines’ (13) dv-‐‑e gazet-‐‑y two-‐‑F.NOM newspaper(F)-‐‑SG.GEN ‘two newspapers’ (14) dv-‐‑a pis´m-‐‑a two-‐‑N.NOM letters(N)-‐‑SG.GEN ‘two letters’ Naturally, ‘five’ is rather different: (15) Na ulic-‐‑e sto-‐‑it pjat´ dom-‐‑ov. on street-‐‑SG.LOC stand-‐‑3SG five[NOM] house-‐‑PL.GEN ‘There are five houses on the street.’ (16) k pjat-‐‑i dom-‐‑am towards five-‐‑DAT house-‐‑PL.DAT ‘towards five houses’ (17) The simple cardinal numerals of Russian odin dva tri pjat´ sto tysjača million 1 2 3 5 100 1,000 1,000,000 1. agrees with noun in syntactic number + -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ 2. agrees in case in the direct case + -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ 3. agrees in gender 4. agrees in animacy + (+) -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ 5. has no semantically + + + -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ -‐‑ independent plural + + + + (-‐‑) -‐‑ -‐‑ 6. fails to take agreeing determiners + + + + + -‐‑ -‐‑ 7. does not take noun in genitive plural throughout + + + + + ± -‐‑ paradigm Each numeral in turn shows slightly fewer adjective-‐‑like (more noun-‐‑like, head-‐‑ like) properties: 4 Greville G. Corbett Prominent Internal Possessors SOAS, September 2016 ‘If the simple cardinal numerals of a given language vary in their syntactic behaviour, the numerals showing nounier behaviour will denote higher numerals than those with less nouny behaviour’ (Corbett 1978: 363; cf. Hurford – 1987: 187 197). Russian predicate agreement: in principle, two possibilities: (18) vošl-‐‑o pjat´ devušek came.in-‐‑SG.NEUT five.NOM girl.PL.GEN ‘five girls came in’ (19) vošl-‐‑i pjat´ devušek came.in-‐‑PL five.NOM girl.PL.GEN ‘five girls came in’ Table 1 : Predicate agreement with numeral phrases in Slavonic (Corbett 2000: -‐‑ 214 216 for details and sources, notably Suprun 1969: 175-‐‑187) 2 3 4 5-‐‑10 100 West Slavonic: Czech PL PL PL sg sg Slovak PL PL PL PL/sg sg Sorbian DUAL PL PL PL/sg sg 99% PL 91% PL ||100% PL 7% PL Polish (N=123) (N=43) (N=15) (N=68) South Slavonic: Old Church DUAL PL PL (PL)/sg Slavonic Bulgarian PL PL PL PL PL Macedonian PL PL PL PL PL 97% PL 89% PL 83% PL 7% PL Serbo-‐‑Croat (N=735) (N=249) (N=133) (N=1161) Slovene DUAL PL PL sg sg East Slavonic: 83% PL 79% PL 74% PL 38% PL 21% PL Ukrainian (N=208) (N=150) (N=34) (N=45) (N=14) 92% PL 78% PL 63% PL 39% PL || 50% PL Belarusian 50% PL Russian (N=219) (N=67) (N=16) (N=49) (N=2) 86% PL 77% PL 76% PL (N=541) (N=247) (N=68) (N=220) In Table 1, DUAL (where available) and PL(URAL) represent semantic agreement. When a cell has a single entry (e.g. ‘PL’), this indicates that the form is used in the majority of instances, though not necessarily all. A gap indicates a lack of data. 5 Greville G. Corbett Prominent Internal Possessors SOAS, September 2016 3.2.2 Slavonic possessive adjectives Upper Sorbian (Corbett 1987: 304, citing Faßke 1981: 385) (20) To je naš-‐‑eho wučerj-‐‑ow-‐‑a zahrodk-‐‑a. That is our-‐‑GEN.SG.M teacher-‐‑POSS-‐‑NOM.SG.F garden(F)-‐‑NOM.SG Wón‘That is our teacher’s njej garden.’ wjele w dźěła. 3SG.NOM.M a.lot in 3SG.LOC.F works. ‘He [our teacher] works in it a lot.’ (See recent work O'Connor, in Maling & Skarabela. 2013.) 3.2.3 Possessors in Arawan languages Kulina (Dienst 2014: 90-‐‑91) Agreement with object, possessor

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