I id i tor : Nigel v incent (Unrrersi tv oi Ma¡chester)

Edi tor ia l BoardR. Borslel (N-of th W¿lcs), E. K. B¡osr, (Esscx), B. Com, ¡e (S. Cal i fornia), A. Cut ler (Cambridgel ,Nl . B. H¡rr is (Esscx), R. f Í . I joss ( ] Ia)rchestc¡) , J. R. I lur ford (Dcl inbureh), R. Kcmpson (SOAS),D. R. Ladd (Edinburch), S. C Le\ inso¡ (Ber l i , , ) , L. Nl i l roy (N-e$cast le) , S. Ron¡ainr(Oxford).

Notes fo¡ Contributo¡s and Subsc¡ibe¡s

Policy. The Journal ol ¿;rsi,¡ri.s is concerned$ r" r ' l l - . ,

' , \ " r ' f

' r s ' . r . t i r " I ' r l i r . ph"net ics). Preferencc is givcD to art ic les of generaltheoret ical intercst . Contr ibut ions are $elcomedftod l inguists in al l corrnt¡ ies, ¡nd not n ' \erel !f ¡om members of the L¡rsuist ics Associat ion ofGreat Ur i ta i ¡ . The norn¡ l language ol pub'I ic¡ t ion is Engl ish.

Edi tor iat Address. Nigel Vi , rce¡t , Depa¡tmentof L inguist lcs, U¡ iversi tv of Nlanchester, NIanchcster Mr3 9PL, Engl¡¡d.

Books for re! ,eu'should be sent to the Edi tor .

Ct Ca¡¡br idse Universi t ] Prcss, r990

Subsc¡ ipt ions. One rolume of the

'o¿r,d/

ispubl ished e¡.h ye¡r in n\o pa.ts. I 'he sLrb-scr ipt ion pr ice rvhich iDclucles postdge is dj6UK, d39 elscwhere, USA and Canad¡ US$75 oo srng , p,r-r : , , , : r l .o . , - i l .b 'e a- ( :o.oon-r c.h, I S $. t r .oo, r ' - . p.s: 'sF. O'd ' r . .shich must be :rccoúp¿Died by pryment, m¡) 'L. p la rJ ' . i rh ¡r l L, uk. . l - r ' r .u l ro,r" ,¡sc¡r or \ r r . l i r . . ' "

a.ñ J"oq. I 'n r--r ' r ¡Press, Ddinburgh Bul ld ing, Shaftesbury Roacl ,Cambric lge ctsz 2RLi, or , in USA and Canadr,Cambridge Universi tv Press, Joumals Depart-ñent,40 West 2oth Street, ¡_cw York, \Y¡oo¡: . POS'I \ ' I ,ASTER: scnd address cha¡sesln-he US \ . 'o a l l , ¡d

' t ' J ' t ,aal at L '¿su;, l ¡ ,

Cañbr idge Universi ty Press, r ro NI id lañd,Avcnue, Port Chester, Nes York, NY ro573.

Claims for the repla.enlent of joLrrnals belrevedto be lost in t ransni issio¡ u ' i1 l onlv bc cntc¡-ta ined i f made in1n1edlately af ter receipt of thcsubseqrrent issues of thc Journr l .Copying. T 'h is joL,rnal is resistercd * idr thet ,pt q l r ( c¡ , i . . ' ( , , r , r . :7.onprr . .Stret¡ .Sálem, Mass. or97o. O¡ga¡ iz¡ t ions in the USAsl. r - , ' lso

'Fgr. te,eJ $,r l - ' fe

a.C.a. In:r)therefo¡e copy mater ia l (be)ond the l imi tspermlned by sect ions ro7 and ¡o8 of USAcopyr ight larv) sublcct to palment to the C.C.C.of the per-copv fee of $o5.oo. This consent doeslrot exten. l to mult ip le coPr, ing lbr promo¡ionalor commercial purposes Codeoo22 2267/9a/al

ISI Tc¡r Sheet Ser. , ice, r5or \ l ¡ rket Street,Phi ladelphia, PennsYlvania re,o1, US,{ , isauthor ized to supply s ingle copies , : , f sep¡rate¿rt ic les for pr ivate üse onlv.

Fot al l othet re, pernission should be soughtl iom Cambridge or the American Bf¡rch ofCambridgc Llniversi t ) Press

Style. Inre¡dins contr ibutors shoulc l cnsutethat their maDuscr ipts confor¡¡ to the standdrdslaid do$n jn thc LS,A St! ie Sheet (pr intedper 'odical l l i ¡ the ¿Sl B!1l f l i l r ) , r rcept r¡ t i refol lo lv ing respccts:

(¡) Footnotes shoL¡ ld as f ¡ r as possiblc beavoic{cd; thc\ should notcontain special s lmbolssuch as those used in the lnte rat ionr l Froirei¡c

(b) Phonrt ic t ranscr ipt ions should, lvhereverpossiblc, makc L¡sr of the s lmbols and .o¡\ .ent ions of the lnterDát io¡al Phonet ic Alph¿bet,and should be no 'narros'er ' than is absolutelyneccssarv {b¡ rhe purpose

(c) Bibl 'og¡aphlcal references at the end ofeách art ;c lc. , ¡ review shóuld conform to thefol losins models ( t i t les of per iodicals should be¡bbreviated as \n Bibliasliphie Línsulst;que) :Bloomfield, L. ( tgts) . Laneuaee. Nerv YorL:

Hol t .B. l inq, , . D , ,ot ' i ' l \ "a,on ,2" ' , , n, ' in-¡nirg.

¿g 4r. 555 573.BrrrsmanD, K. ( \sob). Gtundt lss der neryle¡chen-

den Grannatih der indosernanischen Sprachen.z¡d td. , vol . 2, part r . Strassburs: TrúbDcr.

Cháfe, W. 1, . ( re65). Revieñ of Lonsacre, R. E.Grtnnur di : ta.-ery proredul .s. Ls 4r.6ao6u.

L Linguístícs 26 (1990), r lr. Printed in creat Brilain

Be-heading the wordlLAURIE BAUER

Victoriq Uniyersity of Wellíngton, New Zealand

(Received 17 May 1988; revised 14 February 1989)

I . INTRoDUCTIoN - ' '

Notions of'head' and 'modifier' have a long and respectable history i isyntax, although they have changed considerably in recent years. But theapplication of similar notions to mo¡phology is relatively new. The exrensronof these notions to morphology has been prompted by two developments :

(i) Intimations from dependency grammarians that their approach tolanguage ought to be generalizable to rnorphology (Andersán, rggo);

and, far mor€ importantly,

(i i) The development oflexicalist theories of word-formation usins an X-bar notat ion.

In an X-bar notation, the head of a category to be expanded is always shownby the notation. It is traceable f¡om the rule format that the head of a NounPhrase is the Noun, of an Adjective phrase the Adjective and so on. If thesame notation is to be used, the same must also be true below the level of theword. It thus becomes crucial to know what the head ofany particular wordis. Will iams (198r a) answers this question by posrulating a ;Righthand

HeadRule', which states that the rightmost b¡anch in any tree showi;g the internalstructure of a word will always be the head. It will be the conte¡tion of thispaper that such a rule is at best overly simplistic, even in English, and thatthe current model of headedness which derives from the work of Williams isinternally inconsistent.

.1r, , ; ; . . ' ' ' - , ' . ; "

Chomskr, N. ( r 9s7). Sl,ntactic sttu.twes. (J^nú¡Linsuatum, 4.) Thc Hague: Mouton.

I locken, C. F. ( r96a). The Proto CentralAlgonquian kinship systcm. In Goodenough,V¡ . (e¿.) Erplolatians ii cultural a thlotola* .Neq York: McC;raw Hi l l .239 258.' fhe fo l lorv lng requiremelts of thc LSA Style

Shcer *hich wi l l apply to manuscr jpts intendedfor publication in rhe Journal aJ Loquts¡lt\should be part icuiar ly noted:

r . ,A.11 cop,\ , must be double-spaced throushout, and margins of at least r ; inches shouldbe lef t on ¡ l l four s ides of each sheet (LSA sty leshect, scct ;ons r(c) and (d))

2. Tábles, charts and diagrams ( though notsimple rules, examples or fo¡mulae) nrust eachappear on a sepa¡ate sheet, an. l must be label l€d

I ig. : , f ,b e I o- r le ' rke ¿r .oor"p iare.Rcfrrences in the text to the tabie or diágrammü'r b, madF L,y cr t rg thr . l "b. .

"nd n-r in

such terms as ' in the d;agram lbl lowing'(LSAst-v le sheet, sect ;ons r(e) and ro(c)) .

3. Typescr ipts of ar t ic lcs should be submlt ted, , \ , (F

^tr-s j r lp-s ' rpr ' of t r v ies. i , $ñcopies. ' I 'ypescr ipts úi l l not bc returned unless

\rLlrd b\ (onr t 'utñ, . r l cA . r lesheet, sect ion r(s)) .

4. No part of ¡ t i t le or sect ion headins sholr ldbe underscored: the Edi tors exerc;se the 6nalchoice of type faces ;n these cases (LSA sty lesheet, sect ion 8(a)) .

5. The t_\'pescript of an .rfticle should beaccompanied b-v an abstract of about roo wordssunrmariz ing the conceptual contenl o i theart ic le i i t should be ¡ \ ped (double spacecl) on a.et . r" h"e " l uro-r l I SA.t) le s l ee, . , . ' ior, , ) .P¡oofs. First proofs oniy iv i l l be scnt to theauthor (or his nom;nee), who i r i l lbe erpectcd t t ¡corrcct thc¡n ¡nd re¡urn them to thc Ldj t ( ) r , byairmai l wherc rppropr iate, rv i th in three clays of

[t] T]is paper began-as¿ conference paper presenled at the Sixth New Zealand Conferenceor Llnglrslrcs. In wrl lrngton jn Augusl. rqgó. The da¡ before presenLing rhal conrerencepaper, I ¡eceived the copy of Journat ol Lingnsrics contaning Zwicky ¡i985). The paperwas revised in the light of the discussion,ar the conference una,n tt" tigti of Zwickytpaper. ju\ l before I received my cop) ot Hudson (rg87). Ttre pap., oos ttr i ieupon reu,r.Oagarn' and commenr.was sought on it. In the meantime, I had taught this matériar severarumes. ¿no my own vrew qas changing, so that a radically different approach was taken inrne next rewrrte I am aware that the¡e are papers on this top¡c jn the first volume ofYearbook ofMorphology which has not yet reachéd me. One must, however, stop rewnrrngat some point! I should like to thank all those who have given me advici. c¡itrc¡sm andencouragement rn the course of this long gestation. including conference-goers, students119,.^r^1h:. more spec¡fically, rhe anonymous refcrees for the Journat of Linguistics,Winifred Bauer, Dick Hudson and Nigel Vincenr. Nonc of these people shoildle uumedfor the inadequacics of rhis paper, oniy gir,en credit for whatere'r

"á"q"".y ,i

","y fr"*.

The] do nol. ofcourse. nececsari ly agree \arth rr.

(Ca, l ímte¿ nn P. l . l ( ¡^ 'et)L¡N 26

LAURIE BAUER

- In Section 2 of this pape¡, the notion of.head' as it applies in syntax will

be considered, and the extent to which the same notion c;n be extenOe¿ tomo¡phology in English will be discussed in Section 3. It will be concludedthat there is no clear extension of the notion. Then in Section 4 the notionof headedness and percolation will be taken up, and it wilt be argued thatpercolation does not work in the way the model predicts. Such co-rr"lus,onscast considerable doubt on the whole notion of head in morphology.

2. THE NoTIoN oF.HEAD'IN SYNTAX

The notion of'head'in syntax has changed considerably over the last twentyyears or so. Previously, the diffe¡ence bctween endocentric and exocentncconstrucüons was conside¡ed to be basic. In an endocentric constructionthere was said to be one element which was obligatory and had the samedistribution as the enrire construction. This ias iir. ,fr.u¿, of tn.tconstruction (see e.g. Bloomfield, 1935). In an exocentric construction, onthe othe¡ hand, no element had the same distribution u, it"

-"ntrr"

construction and the construction was, correspondingly, considered to haveno head.. More recently, however, it has been poiniá o,.rt ttut ih"." n."elements in exocent c const¡uctions which have a great deal in common withthe heads in endoc€ntric constructions. This rJvised notioi oi t¡eao rssummari?.ld by Zwicky (1985) and Hudson (r9g7) in terms of¡he criteria mart

h,:ad of a construction typically fulfils. ffudson 1r9g7) is u ,epfv io tt"eanrer paper by Zwlcky, and disagrees \¡, ith jt ¡n a number of .aro"atr.However, a great deal ofagreement cán also be foun¿ berwee;;h"i*;;;p".r,and the_following set of crite¡ia a¡e defined by that agreement. tt ,t Juf¿ U"noted that although these crite¡ia are neatly collectled in the two ar¡ctes

Tll.llllil l1.I d:

""1 origina.te there: the crite¡ia have been *iaery

orscussed rn earher literature on the subject. I am simply using this list as auseful summary of past ¡esearch_(i) Semantically a phrase as a whole is a hyponym of its head. Hudson

terms this a,kind of, ¡elauon.The head of a phrase is the subcategorizand, i.e. the item which issubcategorized for the occurrerce oi othe¡ eiements i, ;" ;i;;;;.The head of a phrase is rhe morphosynlactic locus. either in rhar itbears lhe overr inffectional marking uhich is typical of the phraseas a whole, or, more subtly, in that it is thl item f.o- ;i;;morphosy¡ltactic information ,percolates,

to the enti¡e construc_uon.The head of a phrase is rhe governor. t.e. rhe elemenr whichoelermtnes the morphological shape o[ some other elemenl in thepn¡ase.The head ofthe phrase is the distributional equivalent ofthe wholephrase (this is Bloomf,eld's criterion once more;.

(iD

(iiD

BE-HEADINC THE WORD

(vi) The head of a phrase is an obligatory constituent in the phrase.Apart from these criteria, the¡e are a couple of others which are implicit inthese, but which I should like to separate out for thei¡ imoo¡tánce r¡subsequent discussion.

(vii) The head of a phrase is lexical not phrasat. Zwicky points out thatthis is implicir in (ii) above, and it is a point which is str€ssed bydependency grammarians

(viii) The head ofa ph¡ase cha¡acterizes the phrase as a whole. preciselywhat is meant by 'characterization ' is perhaps not entirely clear.Zwicky mentions it pa¡ticula¡ly in relation to (iii) ard (vi) above.Whatever else, it seems to be taken to mean that the head of thephrase determines the part of speech marking for the phrase as awhol€. ' Characterization ' is thus grammatical, not semantrccharacterization. In this paper, this crite¡ion will be used only toindicat€ grammatical cha¡actenzatron.

(ix) Zwicky also allows for the possibility of what he terms ,srammar_inte¡nal' evidence. That is, rf there is regularity in the position ofheads and modifiers in a particular language, then this can be uscdas extra evidence in cases of dispute.

For discussion of how these criteria apply in syntax, see Zwicky (1985) andHudson (r9!7). Here, the focus ofattention is whether and how these c¡iteriaapply in morphology.

One immediate c ticr'sm of other discussions of the head of a wo¡d willalready be apparent to those familiar with the literatu¡e: they consider onlya very nar¡ow range ofcriteria- Williams (r98 r a) bases his decision about thehead of a word almost entirely on (viii). By ignoring all the other criteria, heis potentially giving a very limited view of what the head of a word is. Thesame objection can be made against dep€ndency grammarians dealing withthe head of a word, They, however, appea¡ to see (vi) as thc main criterion,with (vii) as a subsidiary crite¡io¡. In either case, the concent¡ation oD asmall number of c¡iteria can have an effect on the outcome (as can, indeed,be seen by the fact that Williams and Anderson come to different conclusionsabout what the head of a word is). Where the motivation of the head of aconst¡uction is based on,only a selection f¡om the va¡ious criteda, thatselection must be justified. Othe¡wise the motivation of a particular elementas the head of the construction cannot be seen to be any more than a¡andom selection.

3. AppLIcATIoN To ENGLISH MoRpHor-ocy

In this section, the notion of head outlincd above will be discussed in ¡elatronto the mo¡phological structure ofEnglish. The three types ofaffixation foundin English will be conside¡ed in turn; derivational su-ffixation. derivattonalprefixarion and inflectional suffixarion.

(iv)

(v,

LA U RIE BAUER

3.r. Deriyqtional sufrxstíon

We can distinguish between two classes of de¡ivational suffixes in English,those which are class changing and those which a¡e class maintaining.Examples ofeach type are given below. The decimal point is used, as in Bauer(r983), to divide wo¡ds into morphs.

(t) Class-changínggood nessarriv.alshort .encontain-er. izedialect.algenerat ivei t rvdown e¡

(z) C lass-maint ainínggreen ishking domtig¡'essduck ling

I shall now consider the appiication of each of the criteria (i)-(ix) above tothese two types of sumxation.

3.r.r. Hyponymy. The relationship of hyponymy is defined as a unilateralirnplication between propositions (Allan, t986: 179-83;Cruse, 1986: 88f;Lyons, 1977: z9r-5). Hyponymy between items smaller than sentences(instantiating propositions) is proved by inserting the appropriate items rnotherwise identical sentences of an appropriate type (see Cruse, loc. cít-,forsome discussion ofthe type required). Othe¡ sentence frames are also possibleas tests; Lyons (1977 . 294 suggests frames such as

(3) Was it a cow o¡ some othe¡ kind of animal?

to prove the hyponymy between coP and anímal. In general, hyponymybetween nouns is easier to illustrate in sentence frames than hyponymybetwe€n words of other categories, though Lyons suggests

(4) (a) To buy something is to get it in a certain way.(b) To be friendly to someone is to be nice to someone in a cer¡ain

way.

(áa.y is a hyponym of get, friendly is ahyponym ofzlce). Lyons' full definitionof hyponymy is (1917: 294):

Hyponymy is a paradigmatic relation of sense which rests upon the

4

BE-HEADING THE WORD

encapsulation in the hyponym of some syntagmatic modification of thesuperordinate lexeme.

Thc insist€nce on 'syntagmatic modification' is important here: buy€ncapsulates get by purchase or some such expression-

In the case of word-formation, this is not particularly useful unless we havesome notion ofwhat the sense of particular affixes is. In Bauer (1983: r89)it is suggested that a distinction needs to be drawn between the'lexical'and'grammatical' meaning of aflixes. Processes such as nominalization o¡adjectivalization, it is suggested, have only grammatical meaning: that is,something like 'turn the base into a noun' is the meaning of nominalizationaffixes. Other affixes, sucb as the prelix un- have only lexical meaning:something like 'negative'. Others, such as -er, it is suggested, have both: thelexical meaning is something like 'person or object which is typically thesubject of the ve¡b used as the base', while the grammatical meaning is'noun'. If it is assumed that the major catcgory of a wo¡d is determined bythe major category of the affix (as in much ¡ecent morphology, thoughexcluding Aronoff, r9T6), then it may not be necessary to includegrammatical meaning in the semantics. Rather, grammatical meaning will bedete¡mined purely syntactically. This suggests, though, that nominalizationand adjectivalization markers have no meaning. lf that is the case, theycannot take part in any hyponymous relationship.

This conclusion is based only on one interpretation of how the semanticsof amxes might work. However, since no general theory of the semantics ofaffixes is available, there is nothing better to put in its place. Let us conside¡how such an inte¡pretation will affect the way in which we deal with thehyponymy criterion in relation to sufiixes.

In the case of the class-changing suffixes, the evidence is not particularlyuseful, Marchand (1969: z14) claims that the suffix is the head, but this seemsto be more on the basis of characterization than on any strict hyponymycriterion. It is clear thal dialecfal d,oes not denote a type of díalect. Similarly,it is not true that S¿e ¡s ¿r writer implies unilate¡ally Sre rr a lrrile. For suchexamples, therefore, it is clea¡ that the head of the const¡uction is not thebase on this criterion. On the other hand, where the suffix -e¡ is conce¡ned,it seems that the¡e is a case to be made fo¡ the suffix as head.

(5) (a) She is a w¡ite¡ --+ She is a person.(b) What kind of person is she? A w¡itc¡.(c) Was she a writer o¡ some other kind of person?

All these seem to be justiñable, ifrather marginal as actual utterances. Whenwe return to dialectal, though, there is no such easy solution. He¡e the amx-a1 is an adjectivalization marke¡ which

is relatively unmarked semantically, providing adjectival forms with nomajor change in meaning, forms which can be used to replace the

LAURIE BA UER

attributive use of the corresponding noun, for insta¡rce: educ.tt¡onpolícy feducat¡onctl pol¡cy efc. (Bauer, 1983: zz3)

Consider examples such as those in (6):

(6) (a) To be di¿lectal is to be adjectival in a certain way.(b) When you say it is adjectival, do you mean it is dialectal o¡

adjectival in som€ other way?

These do not seem to be at all possible. Nor does it seem possible to nnd somesuitable ph¡ase to ¡eplace the word adjectíval in these examples. In suchcases, therefore, there is no argument eithe¡ for saying that the base is thehead o¡ for saying that the suffix is the head by this crite¡ion.

The class-maintaining suffixes are only slightly easier to deal with. If wecompare greenish alad duckling wíth rather green and líttle duck respeclively,we appear to have the same semantic ¡elationship bety,¡een the elements in thetwo cases. In the syntactic cases, the semantic supe¡ordinates are clearlygreen and duck. ln the morphological cases, therefore, the semantic headmust be the base. The morphological case indicates he¡e an encapsulation ofsyntagmatic modification, as required by Lyons. We can find support for thisin examples like the following:

(7) (a) The creature is a duckling --+ The creature is a duck.(b) A duckling is a duck of a certain kind.(c) What kind of duck was it? A ducklins.(d) Was i t a duckl ing or some other k ind of duck?(e) For the paint to be greenish is for the paint to be green in a

certain way.(f) When you say it's green, do you mean it,s greenish or green in

some other way?

In the case of kíngdom, however, the answer is no clearer than it was withdialectal. 'lhere does not appear to be any sense which can reasonably beattributed to -do¡n which would allow it to be put into diagnostic sentenceframes like those shown aboye for ducklíng or writer. Arrythlrr1 resemblingsolid evidence is thus only available in a subset of cases.

3.t.2. Subcategorizand. 'Íhere is a la¡ge body of data to show that a sumxselects the bases that it can occur with in terms of (a) phonology (the finalsegment or segments of the base, the stress pattern of the base, etc.); (b)morphology (the gender or conjugation class of the base, whether the baseis from learned or native vocabulary, the catego¡y of the base etc.); and (c)semantics (whether the base denotes a human or non-human objecL, anobject which is alienably or inalienably possessed, and so on). Rather thantry to repeat this kind ofinformation here, I refer the reader to Bauer (r9g3)and Plank (r98 r), where many such examples are given. Others can be foundin almost any detailed discussion of wo¡d-formation. The suffix is obviouslv

BE.HEADTNC THE WORD

in these cases subcategodzed in terms of the bases with which it can co-<.rocur,and as such can be seen as the head of the construction, the head of the word.

However, Zwicky (1985: 16) makes an a¡gument for the alternatrveconclusion on the basis of this crite¡ion. He claims that adjectives such assoft, hard, qu¡ck choose the suffix -ez, while others such as ¿asy, dfficult, slowdo not. He claims that this shows the base to be the head on this c¡iterion.It seems to me that Zwicky's claim here is not entirely convincing. Many(possibly most) ofthe examples ofZwicky's type can be accounted for by theassumption that the suffix chooses its bases. For example, in the case of -en,it is well known that -en car, be added only to monosyllabic bases that endin one of a limited number of consonants. Since there are a larse number ofattested cases in which rhe amx must choose the base. and very few, if any,where the alternative analysis is the only one possible, Occam,s razorindicates that we should maintain a single analysis, rather than setting up rwoto deal with the same data.

3.t.3. Morphosyntactic locus. Atthough there a¡e a few cases whereinflectional affixes are attached to the left of derivational suffixes in English(betterment, gutsy, mostly) they are relatively few and far between. To whatextent this should be seen as providing evidence for the headship ofderivational suffixes is perhaps a moot point, since it could be arsued thatthis is due to the intemal cohesion of the word rarher rhan to anyiÁing etse.

Zwicky (1985: 16 17) also ¡aises another potential problem for thiscriterion. It implies, he says, assuming morphology to be analogous rosyntax, a bracketing of the form [happi[ness + esl] rather than the expectedllhappi + ness)esl, which is required morphologically and semanticaliy. Tounde¡stand this, consider a parallel syntactic casc. The normal syntacticb¡acketing of the phrase large boxer would be llargelbox + isl] notlllarge + bofes). In the syntactic case, though, the b¡acketing seems to bedetermined by the fact that áones is a word-form of English, and thus, in thegeneral understanding, a constituent. Semantically, one might well argue thatplurality is predicated of the entity [large box], ¡athe¡ rhan that largeness ispredicated of plural boxes. Such an interpretation would make extremelygood sense in any language where adjectives agree in numbe¡ with the nounsthey modify. That is, it is not clear that the morphological rule is any worsethan the syntactic rule in this ¡espect. Whether Zwicky is correct in assumingthat such a bracketing is demanded by the assumption that amxes ar€ headso¡ not, it does not seem that his objection is one specificalty against such amodel, but one which requires more general discussion of the way in whichsemantic and fo¡mal modification match (if they do).

So far, therefore, we have no evidence f¡om this crit€¡ion in eitherdircction. Zwicky (1985: 17) also notes, I think correctly, that

the claim is not merely that inflectional suflixes a¡e located.ncxr ro

'7

LAURIE BAUER

derivational sumxes ... but also that there is a close bond between a word-final morpheme and a following inflectional suffix.

The internal cohesion ofthe word would be sufficient explanation ofthe factswere this not the case. The only evidence of a close bond that I can think ofis the allomorphy of, for example, the plural and past tense morphemes inEnglish. As a phonological lirk, this does not seem to me to be particularlypersuasive: the same link can be found in clitics in English, which are far lessclosely bound than amxes.

On the whole. therefore. it does not seem that this c¡iterion can be used toshow anything with regard to headedness in suffixed derivatives. Perhaps thebest one can say is th¿t ifit shows anything, it is that the base is not the head.

3.t.4. Govemor. I know of no clear evidence on this point. There do notappear to be many instances where this criterion can even be invoked, andin some cases where it might be the evidence is unclear. An example is givenimmediately below, in rvhich the outcome oftrying to apply the criterion canbe theory-dependent. This means that it is of dubious value to use thiscdterion as a test.

The relevant example is the following. The adjective-forming suffix -al isgenerally said to have an allomorph -aal, whose distribution is not predictableexcept on lexical grounds. Chomsky and Halle (1968) suggest that the ¿lshould be part of the base, and should be deleted when word-final, butretained with subsequent amxation by -al. If this point ofview is adopted, thesuffix could be said to determine the form ofthe base, and thus to behave likea head with respect to this c¡iterion. The alternative approach, of course, isthat the base determines the form of the affix, and fhat habit demands -¿¿l.This is a mo¡e t¡aditional view of the matter, and would irnply that the basebehaves like a head with respect to this criterion. The Chomsky and Halleversion is given support to the extent that the -¿r- appears before all Class Iaffixation. The generalization is a good one, as is shown by examples such asactual (actuaD), actuate), gradual (graduate), spírítual (spirituctus), textual(fextuary). However, it is not perfect, as is shown by forms such as acrlve,conception, efiéctive, sensory as opposed lo actual, conceptual, elfectual,sensual. The case appears to be not proven.

3.r.5. Distributional equiyqlent. With class-changing suffixes, neither the basenor the suffix is a distributional equivalent of the word as a whole. The wo¡dis an exocentric conshuction in these cases. With class-maintaining suffixes,if eithe¡ element is the distributional equivalent of the word as a whole, it isthe base. For example, green a¡d duck are the dist¡ibutional equivalents ofgreenish and duckling, but kíngdor? does not have a distdbutional equivalentin either of its elements.

3.r.6. Obligatory constituent. In wo¡ds with a class-maintaining sulix, it is

BE-HEADING THE WORD

obvious that the base is the obligatory constituent. In words with a class-changing suffix, this is less obvious, since the construction is exocentdc.However, consider a potential phrase structure rule for generating words. Itwill have to have the following form:

(8) Word ' Base (+Sufñx)

With a rule of this form, it is clearer that only the base is obligatory. Everyword must contain a base, but it need not contain a sumx.

3.f.'7. Lexical element. -fhis c¡iterion has been used within dependencymorphology to argue fo¡ the base as the head of the word (Anderson, r98o:243). However, it needs to be made clear precisely what 'lexical' means he¡e.It does not appear to mean simply'listed in the lexicon': ifthat we¡e the case,affixes would be just as lexical as bases. Rather it seems to mean 'non-phrasal'. Consider, for example, Anderson & Ewen (1987: 88):

We can restrict the set of potential heads for a const¡uction to constituentswhich are not only obligatory but also LEXICAL - ¡.¿. the leqst inclusiveconstitutes. [Italics mine, L.B.]

This stress on non-phrasal-ness as a criterion is odd in dependency grammarwhere all nodes are lexical by definition, but this is not the major problemwith this crite¡ion. It is still not clear precisely what this c¡iterion means. Itmight mean (a) that the head ofa phrase must be non-phrasal at the very f,rstlevel of analysis into immediate constituents, or it might mean (b) that thehead must be non-phrasal at some level of analysis. If the former, then nowidely-used version of X-bar grammar pays attention to this criterion, sincethe head ofX-double-bar is always also the head ofX-bar, so that X-double-bar is always divided into a modifying constituent (phrasal or lexical) and aphrasal element which includes a head. Ifthe latter inte¡p¡etation is intended,it appears vacuous, since all elements are eventually te¡minal elements. Letus then assume that the first interpretation is intended, and that the head independency grammar is different f¡om the head in X-bar grammar in thisrespect (although there is little else to support such a conclusion). If this isthe case, then the only node which can be guaranteed to be non-phrasal ina t¡ee adding a sumx to a base is the node dominating the suffix. The basemay branch, as is shown by a word like conta¡nerize. Thus, it seems that, pac€the dependency grammarians, the dernand fo¡ a lexical node can be read asan argument for having the affix, not the base, as the head of a word. Again,though, the result of applying the criterion can be seen to be theory-dependent, which suggests that the crite¡ion does not pick out some kind ofall-encompassing notion of 'head'

3.r.8. Chdracterizalion. Where class-changing suffixes are involved, it is clearthat they characterize the word as a whole by determining its major category(Marchand, 1969; Will iams, r98r a). This is i l lustrated in (r) above.

LA UR IE BAUER

_ Where class-maintaining afixes are involved, the standa¡d argument is

that the sumx indicates the subcategory to which the wo¡d belongs ivithin themajor category. Tiger a\d tigress may both be nouns, but onlithe latter isspecifically feminine, cannot be referred to using ¿¿, and so án. King andkingdom arc both nouns, but the latte¡ is inanimate, while the former isanrmate, and it js the suffix which makes this difference. Thus even in suchcases it is taken that the sumx is the charactedstic element in the const¡uctron,and thus the head.

3.r.9. Grammar-internal eyidence.I know of no relevant Arammar-intemalevidence for Engii,h.

3.r.ro. Conclus¡on The ¡esults of the various a¡guments a¡e summarized inTable r. The implications of these results will be taken up later.

a : affix is the head; b : base is the head by the relevant crite¡ion.

T'qble tSummary of conclusions fo¡ Derivational Sufixes

3.2. Deriyatíonal prcfxatíon

Turning now to prefixation rather than sumxation, the same questions canbe asked again. Again a distinction can be made between class-changing andclass-maintaining affixes, and examples of each type are given belo,i. Wtrileclass-changing suffixes are the most common type ofsuffix, class_maintainingprefixes are more common than class-changing ones.

(9) Class-changingen noblede planea . blazeun.ho¡se

(ro\ Clasr-mainrainingex.presidentun.grammaticalde.centralizere.w¡ i te

3.2.t. Hyponymy, Some of the class-maintaining prefixes form derivatives

BE-HEADTNG THE WORD

which are fairly clearly hyponyms of the base. R¿w¡üe, for instance, can beseen as a kind of rrite, even if (r r) is a ¡ather odd sentence.

(r r) To rewrite something is to w¡ite it in a ccrtain way.

Better, and perhaps equally valuable for these purposes, is (rz).

(r2) When she wrote it, did she write it for rhe flrst t ime or rew¡ite it?

Certainly we can see retvrite as the encapsulation of some syntagmaticmodification, namely wríte qgaín. ln other cases of class-maintainingprefixes, particularly those with negative o¡ ¡eversative prefixes, the case isnot so clear. Is at ex-president a ktnd of president? Clearly not, in one sense:ex-presidents do not fo¡m a subset of the set of presidents. An ex-presidentis a member of the set of former and still living holders of ofice, and so wemight argue Iíat ex-prcsident is a hyponym of e¡-. On the other hand, theonly thing we know about someone desc¡ibed í\s an ex-prcsident is that atsome stage Íhey wera a preJidenl. Formal tests do not appear to help a greatdeal.

(r3) (a) Is she an ex-president or some otber kind of president?(b) Is she an ex-president of some other kind of formcr ofice-

holder?(c) What kind of president is he? An ex-president.(d) What kind of former olice-holde¡ is he? An ex-p¡esident.(e) They are ex-p¡esidents + They are presidents.(0 They are ex-presidents --+ They are former office-holders.

My own intuit ions are not absolutely clear about all these sentences, Dur onthe whole I prefer those which seem to indicate that we are dealing with ahyponym of the prefix.

With forms such as ungrammut¡cal, decentralize zr\d drsraler, the problemsare evcn greater. lt is clearly inaorect to suggost that It ís ungrammatícalimplies 11 ís grammatícal (and similarly for the other examples), yet in thesecases it is not clear how the derjvatives can be hyponyms of the prefixeseither.

(I4) (a) To be ungrammatical is to be negative in a certain way.(b) To decentralize something is to undo something in a ce¡tain

way.(c) To disinter something is to reverse something in a ccrtain way.

None of these is particularly convincing, though the last is perhaps nolimpossiblc.

With these prefixes the¡e is thus no real gene¡alization to be made, thoughthe evidence favou¡s thc prelix being the head just as much as it favou¡s thebase.

C¡iterion

Class-changingClass-maintaining

89

?a?b

aa

I

,b?a

?bb?az' la l

LAURIE BA UER

With the class-changing prefixes, the problems a¡e the same as they w€rewith class-changing suffixes. The criterion is not clearly applicable at all.

3.2.2. Subcalegorizand. The refe¡e¡ces given in Section 3.r.2. concerningaffixes choosing their bases apply equally here. Zwicky (1985) does notspecifically discuss prefixes, and it is not clea¡ whether his point could beext€nded to prefixes, since on the whole prefixes do not compete with eachother in English to the extent that sumxes do. In cases stch as uneatable asopposed to inedible, the prefix selects the base in terms of its marking forLatinateness. It is the bases which must be marked in this way, and theprefixes must be subcategorized to occur with one or the other. Thus theargument in favour of seeing the amx as the head is, if anything, strongerhere than it was in the case of the suffixes.

3.23. Morphosyntactic locus. The prefix is never the formative to whichinflectional affixes are added in English, so that to the extent this criterioncan be used below the level of the wo¡d, it supports the base being the headin cases of derivational prefixation

It should, however, be borne in mind that it was queried in Section 3. r,3.whether the internal cohesion ofthe word might not be sumcient explanationfor the obse¡ved behaviour of sulixes. and the criterion mav not be a suitableone at the morphological level.

3.2.4, Goyernor.I know of no relevant data on this point,

3.2.5. Distríbutional equittalent. Where class-changing preñxes are involved,neither the base nor the prefix is the distributional equivalent of the word asa whole.

With class-maintaining prefixation the base is the distributional equivalentof the word as a whole in the majority ofcases. In some cases the equivalenceis not total. Considsr, for example,

(r5) (a) Fate has pre ordained whether we will succeed or not.(b) * Fate has ordained wheth€r w€ will succeed or not.

While I do not wish to under-estimate the problems caused by the inhe¡itanceof frames (to use Roeper & Siegel's, rgjS 2o2 terminology), I think suchcases can probably be ignored here. The fa¡ more common occu¡rence is fo¡the un-prefixed word to have a wider distribution than the prefixed word. Ifcases like the aboye were deemed typical, evidencs on headship f¡om thiscdterion would be extremely tenuous.

3.2.6. Obligator), constituenf. The arguments presented in 3.L6. to the effectthat words must contain a base but need not contain an affix apply here aswell-

BE-HEADING THE WORD

3.2.7. Lexicql elem¿r¡Í. The arguments from Section 3.r.7. also apply here.Thus, ther€ are problems in deciding how the criterion is to be applied, butunder the most likely interpretation the amx would be designated the head.

3.2.8. Charucterizatíon. Where class-changing preñxes are involved, it isclear that they cha¡acterize the new wo¡d by determining its major category.Even Williams (r98ra: 249) accepts these as systematic exceptions to hisRighthand Head Rule.

Where class-maintaining prefixes are involved, the picture is less clear.Will iams (r981a: 248), Lieber (r98r), Selkirk (1982) and others assume thatthe base is the head in such cases, since there are some prefixes which can beadded 'transparently' to any category of base, and the category of th€derived word is always the category of the base. Williams gives the example

(I6) counter+¡evolutioncounter+ sinkcounter +productive

whe¡e the category of the whole is always the cat€gory of the base, and theprefix does not appear to have had any effect on the category. However, ifthe line of argument from 3.r.8. is accepted, it can also be applied here.Considef the case of prefixation of d¡s-. and in particular tte requiredpreposition in co-occurring adverbials.

(I7) (a) Lee conn€cted the wi¡e to the battery.(b) * Lee connected the wire from the battery.(c) *Lee disconnected the wi¡e to the battery.(d) Lee disconnected the wire from the battery.

Here it is clear that prefixation is changing the category of the verb (on a fineanalysis of category), since the unpreñxed form occurs in an environmentwhich is grammatically different from that in which the p¡efixed form occurs.Similar examples can be found with other prefixes. Consider the followingcase with r¿-.

(r8) (a) Pat iterated his objectrons.(b) *Pat iterated that he objected.(c) Pat reiterated her objections.(d) Pat reite¡ated that she objected. c

It was argued above in Section 3.2.5 that it might be possible to ignore thisdifference in terms of the critedon of distributional equivalence, but hereessentially similar data are being considered f¡om a different point of view,namely how the wo¡d as a whole is cha¡acterized. It seems to me that adistinction can be made here, and that such differences are more imDo¡ranrin terms of characterization than in terms oldistribution. This then providesan argument for considering the prefrx under this criterion to be the head of

I

I{

,T2 r3

LAURIE BAUER

the construction. The question is: how far can this result f¡om negativeprefixes be generalized? Lyons (1977: 52rn) points out that it is in fact therule for processes of affixation to be class-changing.

It is worth noting that what are normally ¡efe¡red to as class-maintainingde¡ivational process€s rarely, il ever, result in true endocent¡icity. Thestem of the noun 'manhood' is derived from the stem of the noun man,by sulixation of -hood (i.e. N+áoad--+N), but .man, and .manhood'

belong to syntactically distinguishable subclasses of nouns. Strictlyspeaking, even 'unsure', 'unfriendly', etc., are not endocent¡ic. since,l¿ + Adj + Adj is not ¡ecu¡sive.

In other words, only in instances whe¡e prefix A + B -

B is ¡ecu¡sive can westate quite unambiguously by this criterion that the base should be secn asthe head. There are such prefixes in En glish. Meta- and re- are two such, sincewe can have meta-meta-rules arrd re-re-wr¡te, but these Dreflxes are aminority. and are only rarel¡ used recursively.

3.2..9. Grammar-internal eúdence.I know of no relevant evidence here.

3.2-ro. Conclusíon The results of this discussion are tabulated in Table z.and again the implications of these ¡esults will be discussed late¡.

Crite¡ion

Class-changingClass-maintaining

89

aa

bb b

bb

a

aa?a?

a : amx is the head; b : base is the head by the relevant c¡iterion.

Tqble zSummary of Conclusions for De¡ivational prefixes

3.3. Inflectional sffixatíon

Finally, the various crite¡ia will be considered in relation to inflectionalsumxation.

It should be noted that it is not entirely clea¡ that it makes good sense totalk of th€ head in an inflected form. Some theo¡ists (e.g. Chomsky, 1965;Matthews, r972) mark inflectional categories as features on lexemes. In sucha representation, it is not obvious that it makes sense to ask whether a featureis the head of a word, and if so, which featu¡e. However, the featurcs aremerely the input to a series ofrealization rules which determine the form andsequence of stem and amxes in the wo¡d-fo¡m, and these formatives must

BE-HEADING THE WORD

have some kind of structure, even if only a linear one. Headship in inflectedforms can be discussed at this superficial level, whether or not it has anymeaning at a deeper level. Partly this is a matter of the way in which headis defined.

It seems to me that there is a major problem with the notion of head here,which has not been sufficiently discussed. Does the notion apply to morphsor to morphemes? In most ofthe cases discussed in th€ literature, the morphsconcerned realize a single morpheme each, yet we know enough aboutmoryhology to know that this is not a necessary condition on morphological¡epresentations. In the case of inflection, as mentioned above, it seems thatit is the morph which is considered important. There would, however, besome real advantages to viewing the morpheme as the unit in whichheadedness resides. Take, for instance, the case of discontinuous morphs. Indiscontinuous morphs there are two (or more) morphs all realizing the samemorpheme (see Bauer, r988, for some discussion). In the case of a circumfix,such as that in D\tch ge been.te ' skeleton ' ftom been 'bone ', a prefix anda suffix together realize the morpheme which we might call {collective}.Similar inflectional examples can be found. If headedness is a property ofmorphs, it has to be decided whether the prefix, base or suffix is the head. Ifheadedness is a propefty of moryhemes, it only has to be decided whether thebase or affix is the head. Rules such as the Righthand Head Rule then haveto be recast in terms of category rather than in terrns of position, of course.It seems to me that this represents a real simplification in an area where ha¡devidence is not easy to find. I thus favour an approach where headedness isa featu¡e ofmorphemes rather than ofmorphs- This is, how€ver, not ofdirecttelevance in what follows, and can be left to one side.

Precisely what counts as inflection in English is also a vexed question. Thestatus of the nominal plural marker (Beard, r982) has been queried recently,as has that of the adjectival -ed and nominal -rng (Allen, 1978), and thecompa¡ative and superlative ma¡ke¡s a¡e well-known problems. I shall here- inevitably controversially take the following to be inflections in English:noun plu¡als, the 3rd person singular pres€nt tense marker on verbs, the pasttense marker on verbs, the past participle marker on verbs where theparticiple is used as part of a verb group and is preceded by a form of unvl,the -¿¡rg used in a verb group and preceded by a form of BE, the comparativeand superlative markers. The case could be argued for the ordinal -ll2, butthis, along with all other possibilities will be ignored for present purposes.

34.r. Hlponlmy. Consider the case of the plural. While d¿g refers to a singleindividual, dog.r refers to a set of individuals, each of which is a dog. We canthus gloss the plural morpheme, roughly, as 'set of morc than one'. Now,sentences such as (r9) which would have to be acceptable lf dogs rs ahyponym of dog, arc simply nonsensical.

!

r4

LA UR IE BAUER

(r9) (a) What kind of dog is it? Dogs.(b) Is it a dog or some other kind of doss?rc) they are dogs impl ies uni lareral ly rhi r rhey are dog.

On the othe¡ hand, sentences such as (zo) make perfectly good sense, even ifthey are not particularly felicitous.

(2o) (a) What kind of set of more than one is it? Does.(b) Are they dogs or some other kind of set of more than one?(c) They are dogs implies unilaterally that they are a set of more

than one.

Thus it seems that plurals are hyponyms of the affix, not of the base.Now consider the case ofthe comparatiye.If common.er is compared with

more common it is clear that the suffix in the former has the sami functlonas the adverb in the latter. We thus flnd the encapsulation of somesyntagmatic modifrcation, upon which Lyons lays such stress. It also seemslikely that 'being more common,is a type of ,being common,. Here,therefore, there is a good case fo¡ the base being the heaá. If we look at th€semantics of the comparative in ¡ather more detail, this conclusron lsprobably upheld, though less clearly so. Allan's (r9gób: 7r6) comment ondiscussions of the semantics of the comparative is perhaps worth repeaung:

The Journal of Sement¡cs 3.. rf2 (1984) was a special issue supposedly onthe comparative construction; in fact it was devoted almosi entirely toX > Y comparatives, ... and there was surprisingly little insight into themeaning of even that comparatrve.

However, if we look at the formalization of the comparative given by vonStechow (r984: 56), or before him Cresswell (r976: 268;, it appárs that theytake the affix to be the modifier of the base. Only in the tree given byCresswell (1976: 286), in which e¡ than is taken to act as some kiid of co_ordinating conjunction, might the opposite conclusion seem possible. Formalstudies thus do not allow us any insights that were not alreády sained fiomless formal considerations.

As was the case with derivational amxes, the case is not at all clear withother amxes. We thus appea¡ to have a situation whore considerations ofhyponymy do not provide consistent or easily generalizable responses.

33.2. Subcategoriza¡ld. With inflectional affixes, the affix does not generallyselect the base: one of the defining c¡iteria for inflection is g"n"r"lity. anexceptron is provided by the comparative and superlative suffxes, whichselect bases in te¡ms of the number of syllables they contain and a few other(mainly phonological) criteria. In the few cases ofdefective verbs in English,it is the verb which fails to select a particular affix (e.g. the modals, and a fewve¡bs such as beware, quoth, sfride). The evidence is thus thin, andlnconsistent.

I6

I

BE-HEADINC THE WORD

333. Morphosyntactic lcttus. With the list ofinflectional aitxes given aoove,infiectional affixes in English n€vcr attach to other inflectional aflixes. Thereis thus no evidence on this point. If the set of inflectional affixcs we¡eexpanded to include -¡á, for example, then forms likeli ti.s would providesome evidence in favour ol the amx being the head, as long as the internalcohesion ol the word were not considcred the major determinant of amxordering here. It is not clear what force should be given to such coinages asDr Seuss's bíggei g'gettir,1 bigger'. They are marginal in the system ofEnglish, and b¡eak normal rules, though they do suggest that inflectionalaffixes can have additional affixes added to them, just as derivational onescan- Even here, though, there is no evidence of a close link between the twoaffixes involved. Even ilwe fo¡ce the issue as hard as is possible. it is not clearthan an) genuine progress can be made here.

33.4. Governor. The allomorphs ofthe plural morpheme are determined bythe base (either phonologically, in the regular cases or lexically in the case ofablaut and irregular plurals). Similar points can be made about seve¡al otherinflectional affixes. By this criterion. the¡efore, the base is the head.

3.3.5. Distributional equivalenf.It is generally taken as part of the definitionof inflection that neither element in an inflected ,uorá-fo.nr has the samedistribution as the entire word-form. This is not always the case, howcver, asis shown by pairs like

(2I) (a) I want a big salary.(b) I want a bigger salary.

(c) They ar¡ive at noon.{d) They arr ived al noon.

The lack of generality of such examples (for example, (c) and (d) abovewould not wo¡k in the singular) suggests that examples of this type need notb€ taken too seriously, and that inflectional constructions aie basicallyexocentric. As such, they provide no relevant information on headednessunde¡ this criterion.

33.6. Obligatory constítuent. Following the argument in 3. r.6 on the formatof potential phrase structure rules, the base must be seen as the obligarorvelement, and thus the head by this criterion.

33.7. Lexical element,It was argued in Section 3.r.7 that to the exrcnt towhich this criterion can be said to apply at all, it picks out the amx as thehead. The same points a¡e relevant he¡e.

33.8. Characterízalioz. Since the base and the inflected wo¡d_form neverdiffer in major category, it seems that this particular critedon can be arsued

r'7

LAURIE BAUER

eithe¡ way round. It usually seems to be assumed that it is the base whichdetermines the category, but the line of argumentation presented in 3.I.8and 3.2.8 is strongly in favour ofseeing the afllx as the head by this criterion.However, there is one piece of evidence (pointed out to me by Dick Hudson)which might be taken to settle the question. The comparative and superlativeendings can be added to either adjectives or adve¡bs. Examples ate b¡gger,bíggest and sooner, soonest.Where -er, -est are added to adjectives, the ¡esultis an adjective: where th€y are added to adverbs, the result is an adverb. Ifthe affix is the head, we must conclude that there a¡e two homophonous setsof affixes, with the same meanings but different categorial markings. If thebases a¡e the heads, there is only one set of comparative and superlativeaffixes. Since there appears to be no othe¡ evidence in favour of the lesseconomical solution, the criterion must support bases as heads for thisexample.

33.9, Grqmmar-internal evidence, I know of no relevant evidence here,

3.3.ro. Conclusion. Again the conclusions are summa¡ized in Table 3. Justhow these conclusions are to be interDreted is the subiect of the next section-

C¡iterion

BE-HEAD ING THE WORD

89

?b ?bbb

?a'la

a' !a?

aa

bb

a?a?

b?

a : amx is the head; b : base is the head by th€ rel€vant cdterion.

Table 4Summary of Conclusions

two (if not actually part of one or both of the other levels), then we wouldexpect the notion ofhead to be traceable within morphology, too. This is notnecessarily true. Phonological and rnorphological heads (whal€ver they are)will clash within the word-form, because they are determined over differentstructures (see the example in Anderson & Ewen, r9g7: 2g5). This may bewhy beginning linguistics students regularly confuse the morpheme with thesyllable. Also the crite¡ia for headedness in phonology are not entirely thesame as those in syntax: sonodty and stress are criteria in phonology, but notin syntax. We thus have thr€e options: (a) morphologicat heads exist; (b)morphological heads exist, but are deñned by other criteria than syntactlc orphonological ones; (c) morphological heads do not exist. What has been saidin this paper has been predicated on (a), with the ¡ider that it is expected thatmorphological and syntactic c¡ite¡ia for headedness overlap. Option (c) isclearly a viable option, given the ¡esults summa¡ized in Table 4. Option (b)¡equi¡es the motivation of c¡iteria which apply exclusively to morphology.This, ofcourse, remains an option to anyone with sufficient imaginalion. Allthat can be said at this stage is that it is not clear what such criteria wouklbe based on, nor why there should be such criteria, given the overlap betweenmorphology and both syntax and phonology. possibly morphology couldsha¡e some of the criteria for headship in syntax and some ol t-hose inphonology. If that is the case, the most obvious set to choose would be theset syntax and phonology have in common. It is not clear to me that this setcontarns any members. Anderson and Ewen (rgg7: go r) suggest thatobligatoriness and characteristicness may be two such criteria, buiih"." aredifficulties. Firstly, thcy appear ro be defined dilTerently in phonology and

Criterion

Sumxation :CIass-changingClass-maintaining

Prefixation :Class-changingClass-maintaining

Inflectional

babba

89

b?

a: amx is the head; b: base is the head by the relevant c¡iterion.

Table jSummary of Conclusions fo¡ Inflectional Sufixes

3.4. Analysís of results

Tables t, z and 3, themselves summaries of the results of applying the ninecdteria to th¡ee types of amxation in English, are b¡ought together in Table

4. The most obvious characteristic of Table 4 is that the crite¡ia faild¡amatically to agree. The situation here contrasts vividly with that in syntaxas discussed by Hudson (1987) where, according to Hudson at least, all thecriteria agree. Indeed, the first question that needs to be asked is whether thesame notion of head can, after all, be extended from syntax to morphology.

The answer to this must be largely a matter of belief. There is generalagreement of the value of the notion of head in syntax, and the notion ofhead or its equivalent is being used more and more in phonology (Anderson& Ewen, 1987; see also various approaches to metrical phonology). If thenotion of head has value and is theo¡etically relevant at those two levels, andmoryhology is viewed (as it usually is) as an intermediate level between the

r8 r9

LAURIE BAUER

syntax. Secondly, they conflict in morphology (criteria 6 and 8 in Table 4).I shall not pursue this option any further he¡e.

The next point about Table 4 is that different c¡iteria tend to identifydifferent elements as the head. Criteria z, 7 and 8 tend to identify the affix ashead;criteria 3, 5 and 6 tend to identify the base as head. No criterion goesobviously for the righthand element. Criteda I and 5 distinguish betweenclass-changing and class-maintaining affixes. This confusion, moreover, isnot diminished if the criteria which appear not to work well in morphologyare removed, or if inflection is considered separately from derivation-

Given this division in the results of applying the criteria, one possibility isthat we are dealing with two, not one, headlike notions, and if that is thecase, we must ask which of the two is the one which is ¡equired in thiscontexl.

This question brings up the question of the purpose of a head. Why is thenotion of head a necessary one in a grammar? This question has receivedremarkably few solid answers in the literature, but some that have been givenare listed below:

(i) to avoid some inadequacies of constituency rules which do not markheads (Anderson, r9'7r | 27), in particular(a) to capture the relational nature of deep case (Anderson, r97r:

28)(b) to avoid the claim that all relationships are relationships of

constituency (Anderson, r9j |: 29),(ii) to capture, and formalize, 'the fact that the¡e is an essential,

language-independent, relationship between N and NP and betweenV and VP'(Lyons, 1968: 33r): in other words, to allow fo¡ somekjnd of percolation of categories.

(iii) to provide a terminology for referdng to the obligatory constituent,the distributional equivalent etc. (see for example, Bloomfield,1935). In particular, Robinson (r9'7o: 259 60) points out thatvarious transfo¡mational linguists had needed to refer to the head ofa phrase, even though the notion was not formalized in their model.

(iv) to simplify the transfo¡mational component of a grammar(Robinson, t97o).

(v) to show parallels between, for example, verbal and prepositionalphrascs (Matthews, I98r: 166; Chomsky, r97o).

(vi) To state generalizations of head/modifier order in languages(Hudson, r98o; 183).

(vii) to allow one to show why, in some languages, modifiers alwaysmove with their heads in transformational rules (Hudson, r98o:r8¿).

Some of these arguments are arguments in favour of dependency rather thanconstituency in grammars. They are not strictly relevant here. Others apply

BE-HEADING THE WORD

only to syntax, or apply only clearly to syntax. Some may not be very srrongat all. For example, the last one may simply be a consequence ofthe cohesionofall constituents in the languages in question, rather than just the cohesionofwords. Two ¡easons for using the notion ofhead, however, stand out. Thefi¡st is that this allows category percolation (see the quotation from Lyonsabove), and the second is to allow for cross-categorial and cross-linguisticstatements of the ordering of heads and modifiers.

Tho first ofthese has already been dealt with above. It has been araued thatit is the affix which allows for percolarion of the precise category of the word_form. This criterion will be taken up again in a late¡ section. The second isdealt with immediately below.

Languages which use prefixes to the exclusion of suffixes are alwayslanguages which have preposition + noun in prepositional phrases, andverb+object in Verb Phrases. Languages which have noun + postDositionand object+verb are always exclusively sumxing (Curler el a/.. r9g5). Theadposition is generally recognized to be the head in its phrase. as is the yerbin the verb phrase (see Zwicky, r985r Hudson. 1987). I i the affix is the headin all cases, then the orde¡ of head and modifier is consistent. The fo¡ce ofthis argument is reduced, however, when it is realized that while anexclusively prefixing language always has prepositions rather than posr-positions, it is fa¡ f¡om being the case that all languages with preposrtlonsare exclusively prefixing. Indeed, there is a st¡ong tendency for affixes to besuffixes, independent'of other word-o¡der rules. Nonetheless, it seemsthat p¡efixation is much more f¡equent in proposition+Np, verb+objectlanguages, than in languages with Np +postposition, object + verb (Hawkins& Gilligan, 1988). This, then, seems to be the best evidence in favou¡ ofseeing the amx as the head. Note, howeve¡, that it implies seeing the amx asthe head in all cases, not simply in cases where the affix is on the dshthandside or is derivationat. It might even be argued that th¡s kind of uni-versalrstevidence is the best evidence the¡e is in favour of the use ofthe notion ofheadin morphology. Interestingly enough, while this universalist evidence imoliesthat amxes must be heads in English as in other languages, it does not ailowany language-specific evidence on headedness. The evidence is thus of a¡athe¡ diffe¡ent kind from that which has been cited els€where in this oaoer.Its status is correspondingly different, which makes it difficult to compa¡ethis kind of evidence with the other kinds adduced.

3.5. Conclusion

It has been a¡gued that the criteria usually used for deciding headedness insyntax do not apply particularly well in morphology, and provide conflictingresults. An analysis of the reasons for having heads suggested that the mostlmportant criteria were characterization (the percolation of major category)and the universalist position that identif ication of the hcad in morphology

f

2I

4. THE AFFIXAL THEORY oF HEADS

In this section I wish to conside¡ the basic premise that amxes act as headsin complex words in rather more detail. It will be my contention that such aclaim is in fact internally inconsistent, and must therefore be reiected. If thisis so, it follows that such ¡ules as the Righthand Head Rule cannot stand,and that much of Lexical(ist) Morphology will have to be redrafted. It alsocalls into question the whole notion that words haye heads.

4.r. Percolatío t what matches?

The major reason for taking amxes to be heads is to allow for percolation offeatures from the head to the construction as a whole. The cleirest exampleof this is probably the major category features, which are deemed ro oefeatures of the affix and to percolate up to the whole construction in a úeelike the followins:

LAURIE BA UER

can help state gene¡alizations ofhead and modifier across languages. Both ofthese support the notion that the affix should be the head. (Thai is. ncithe¡the dependency grammarians' notion of the basc as head, nor Will iams'snotion of the Righthand Head Rule is supported.) It must be said, howcver,that the eyidence is not as strong as might have been wished, and alternativepositions, including the one that the notion of head has no place inmorphology, are sti l l open.

BE.HI]ADIN G THE WORD

The leature ltLatinarel is one which pe¡colates (Lieber. rggl: 4g;Will iams. r98ra: 253). A word such as u,asúaále is a potential base for theaflix -/ry. However, -lr¡ is affixed only to bases whrch aie [+Latinaie]. WASHis rot Latinate, so the [+ Latinare] marking must come from -r¿óle. If the afljxis the head, then this percolation follows in the same way as major caregorypercolation.

In languages which have grammatical gendcr, gender percolates (Lieber,lóld). In German, all nouns that end in the affix -chen a¡e neute¡, all thosethat end in the amxes -heit or -keít are feminine. To a certain extent thismight be said to work for English, too, in that words ending in the aflix _esscan be refe¡¡ed to by'she'; for English this may bc a pragmatic facr, nor agrammatical one. however. There is some disagreement in the literature as towhether features marking tense percoiate th¡ough heads or not. Selkirk(I982) claims they do not, Will iams (r98ra) claims they do. Featuresma¡king aspect, person and number, and case are presumably ail idertical inthis ¡espcct. Will iams (r98r a) seems to assume that all these pe¡colare.

Finally, it would seem that irregular morphology percolales. Will iams(I98t a: 255) i l lustrates this with the ablaut past tense in English: both standand undersÍand take the same ablaut past tense. Similarly, the plural ofunperson ts unpeople.

_ Selkirk (1982: 75) attempts to generalize f¡om such examples, claimingthat 'syntactic and diacritic' featu¡es percolare (ll-atinate] presumably beinga diacritic feature). While she goes on to suggest that some such fearu¡esmust also be inherited from non-heads, she does not appear to modify thisdefinition ofthe relevant featu¡es. Such a generalization also seems to fit withthe gcneral renor of Wi l l iams's discus¡ ion.

Will iams (r98r a: :5o) also claims that potentiation is a feature of heads.One amx potentiates another ifit c¡eates a base fo¡ the second affix. In rnanycases, derivational amxation potentiates inflectional affixation, sincc in aform like legal.ize.s the -.r cannot be added directly to 1ega1, but ispolentiated b¡ the verbal affix -lze.

4.2. Some examples

In this section, some real data will be presented to see how well pe¡colationactually works. It wil l b€ shown that there are problems with the wholenotion of percolation, when the details of how it should work a¡e conside¡cd.

4.2.r. Collectiveness_ Some nouns in English are termed .collective , nouns,in that they refer to a collection of individuals. The particular nouns onwhich attention will be focused he¡e are those líke Jamíly, group which ¡eferto groups of humans. The definition that has been given here makescollectiveness sound like a semantic feature, but if it is, it also has syntactlcconsequences, because such nouns can take either singular or plural concord_

f*NlL+vl

[** lL+vl

l+NllvJ

RootJ ear

AffixIess

Note, however, that the notion that amxes ,have' a major category is in itselfa controversial one, so that this clear example is, in effect, stipulative: it isonly a clear example because its prerequisite has been stated lcontroversially)to be the case. However, that is not a crucial point at this staee.

Apart from the major category, what else percolates up m-orphologrcaltrees? To my knowledge, no-one has tried to produce a definitive list, so onlya few pa¡ticular examples can be cited. It would seem to be the case that themore that percolates in the same way, the better, so that all features of thesame type should percolate in the same way.

iI

2-1

LAURIE BAUER

The¡e is thus some justification for seeing collectiveness, like humanness andanimateness, as a syntactic featu¡e which is based in semantics.

The¡e are many derived nouns in English which have the feature

[+collective]. They include admínístr ation, commun ity, govem'ment,ministr y, nobil ify arrd peasqnt ry. However, this feature cannot be a featureof the affixes, because th€re are many other instances whe¡e the same aflixesdo not impart any feature [+collective]. Examples rnclude|. command'ment,volubil íty, restor ation, chemíst ry. Thus the feature [+collective] cannotpercolate up from the aflix. Neither, in this case, can it come f¡om the base.Therefore there appears to be a syntactic featu¡e which has not percolated upthe tree, but must have appeared by some other mechanism. The existence ofother mechanisms weakens the case fo¡ the need for percolation.

4.2.2. The prefx'de-'. One ofthe uses ofthe prefix de- in English is to deriveverbs from nouns (extremely rarely, from adjectives). Exal].'ples are de'c¡pher,de grease. de fame, cle value, de nude. This then, is one ofthe small class ofprefixes like er- which Williams (I98r a) sees as systematic exceptions to theRighthand Head Rule, because th€y are the heads (they determine the majorcategory) of the constructions in which they occur.

Most ofthese verbs either have no nominalization or only a nominalizationin -lng listed in dictionaries such as Iáe OxJbrd Englísh Dictionary ar\dChambers Tb,entíeth Century Dictionary. Some of them, however, have othernominalizations. Some of these nominalizations are formed wrlh -ment.According to Marchand (r9ó9: 33I), -ment is chiefly used with words ofRomance origin. In words like dera¡lment, detrainment it thus looks as ifpercolation is working properly. While the bases are ultimately of Romanceo¡igin, they do not have the polysyllabic structure typical of such words, andsynchronically look very much like native vocabulary, and they do notcombine with any affixes that require non-native bases. It thus seems likelythat they were felt as English words by the time the derivatives were coined.It thereiore looks as though the Romance marking has come from the de-,which fits with the idea that the prefix is the head. Other nominalizationshave the amx -ation. Again, according to Ma¡chand (1969: 260) this isusually added to ve¡bs which a¡e Latin or French loans. In general this istrue. Those verbs having at -ation n.ominalization were bo¡rowed with theprefix from Latin or F¡ench. Howeve¡, there is a single exception in the dataI collected f¡om the dictionaries mentioned: devaluation. Finally, there are afew de- verbs with ze¡o nominalizations: decontrol, decoke. delint. Thequestion now adses as to why d¿Íra¡nment, deyaluatíon atd decontrol shottlduse different nominalization processes, If it we¡e the case that the Romancemarking that allowed th€ amxation of -ment in detainment were percolatedfrom the prefix, one would expect to find that the same feature percolated ineach case, so that de- prefixation potentiated -rzer¡t suffixation. This clearly

BE.HEADING THE WORD

does not happen. Rather it appears that the suffix in these cases is determinednot by the prefix, but by th€ root. Valuation and, control, at any rate, arenouns in their own right. Adjacency ¡ather than headedness of affixes seemsto be the detehnining factor. If percolation and headedness were involvedhere, this could not be the result. The conclusion that feature percolation isnot working all the time even for those features it has been desiened to dealwiLh i ' a condemnarion of the not ion.

Note further that it was stated above that most words which include theprefix de- and the suflix -ation arc nominalizations of verbs bor¡owed fromFrench and Latin with the prefix. This is thus an €tymological pattern, rathe¡than one determined by the synchronic structure of these words. As such. itcannot be explained in terms of percolation, either.

4,2.3. Syntactic subcqtegor¡zat¡on frames. Syntactic subcategorization framesare perhaps the most clearly syntactic of the featu¡es that can be carried bya word. In this section, the focus will be on the syntactic subcatego¡izationf¡ames in complex words involving prefixes. If Williams's version ofpercolation theory is correct, th€ subcategodzation ofa prefixed word shouldbe deiermined by the righthand element, except where the prefix is one ofthesmall set which are class-changing, and thus taken to be heads. Ifpe¡colationfollows heads, and affrxes are the heads in all relevant constructions, thesubcategodzation of a prefixed word should always be determined by theprefix. If the subcategorization of prefixed words containing a class-maintaining prefix is defined neither by the prefix nor by the righthandelement in the word, this is strong counter-evidence to percolation theoryunless there is some over-a¡ching gen€ralization which can be appealedto. If the subcategorization of prefixed complex words containing aclass-maintaining prefix is determined by the prefix, then a fundamentalblow is dealt against Will iams's version of percolation theory. If the sub-categorization of preñxed complex words is determined by the base, thenotion of affiies as heads ¡eceives a setback.

The only attempt with which I am familiar to provide an over-archinggeneralization about the subcategorizational behaviou¡ of prefixed words isthat in Ca¡lson and Roeper (r98r). They claim, in an observation theyattribute originally to Ross, that'addition ofprefixes to verbs rules out non-nominal complements' (r98r: r23). This is so clearly untrue, even whenrestdcted to the prefixes they l ist (r98r: r29), that it is swpising that it hasbeen repeated so often. Some examples of the types that a¡e claimed to beexcluded, but which are quite normal, a¡e listed below.

(23) (a) Pip unde¡stood that I could not come.(b) Lee disclosed that no-one had been informed.(c) Sandy predicted that Bush would win the €lection.(d) She has miscalculated badly.

i

24

LAURIE BAUER

(e) He prefers to suffer thar to ask for help.(f) Robin had predetermined to allow her access.(g) The minister reiterated that no such plans existed.(h) Pat undertook to pay the money back within six months.(i) Sam has a tendency to overindulge in chocolate.C) Fate had preordained that we should fail.

(k) Chris ¡eaffirmed that everything possible was being done.

Of course, the fact that one preliminary attempt at a generalization happensnot to be true does not mean that there are no generalizations to be found.However, it will be assumed in what follows that there is no over-archinggeneralization.

Following Roeper and Siegel (1978: 202-3) we can say that subcategoriz-ation frames can be inhe¡ited, deleted or added dudng word-formation. Weare dealing here with two possible paths of percolation, defined by the affix-head hypothesis outlined in Section 3 and Williams's Righthand Head Rule.Each of inhe¡itance, deletion and addition will be dealt with in turn, andrelated to each of these potential paths of percolation. First the generalp¡edictions made by the two hypotheses will be discussed, and then thesepredictions will be conf¡onted with examples.

Inheritance of subcategorization f¡ames will be considered first. IfWilliams's version of percolation is correct, with the Righthand Head Rulein operation, then it would be predicted that the majority of sub-categorization f¡ames would be inherited (hat is, that the subcategorizationof the prefixed form would be the same as the subcategorization of thenon-prefixed form). Il on the other hand, affixes are always heads ofconstructions, all words with the same prefix would be expected to have thesame subcategorization frames, independent of those of the base.

Whe¡e deletion of subcategorization f¡ames is concerned, it is ha¡de¡ toknow what to predict. If Williams is dght, deletion of subcategorizationframes can, in many instances, also be easily explained: it might be the casethat the prefixed verb, for semantic reasons, only inherits a subset of thesubcategorization frames that are used by the base verb. Consider, forexample, the word discompose. According to The Macquqrie Dictionary,compose can trc eíther transitive or intransitive, while d¿scompose car' or^ly betransitive. But the intransitive meaning of compose is 'to practisecomposition', which is not a meaning taken up in discompose, since there is(as yet?) no established need for a verb which is the negation of compose inthis sense. Here we have deletion of the intransitive subcategorization frame.But to the extent that this is pxample is typical, it seems, that such a deletionof subcategorization frames can, in many if not all cases, be explained onsemantic grounds. To phrase this another way, if it is assumed that there aretwo homonymous verbs compose, one of them transitive, the otherintransitive, then only the transitive one provides a base for dls- prefixation.

BE-HEADING THE WORD

If we are dealing with a theory in which prefixes are always heads, then thereshould be no deletion of subcatego¡ization f¡ames, because the frames shquldalways be determined by the prefix, and there is nowhere they can be'deleted' f¡om. Thus the mere existence of instances of deletsd sub-categorization frames argues against the affix-head hypothesis.

The addition of subcategorization frames in word-fo¡mation is alwaysproblematical. Since the general assumption in morphological studies is thatthe behaviour of a complex wo¡d is a function of the behaviou¡ of itscomponent parts, the addition of subcategorization lrames ought to beimpossible, unless it is done by some general rule. Roeper and Siegel suggestthat it only happens by redundancy rules (denominal vorbs must contaln asubject position, though the noun did not have one, and so on). It will be seeribelow that this is not always the case.

We thus have the situation whe¡e inheritance of subcategorization framesis damaging to the amx-head hypothesis, but not to the Righthand HeadRule. Deletion of subcategorization frames is equally damaging to the amx-head rule, but not to the Righthand Head rule. Addition of subcategor¡zatronframes is damaging to both hypotheses. Inhe¡itance and deletion are bothwidely recognized in the literature (see e.g. Roeper & Siegel, 1978). This istherefore damaging to the amx-head hypothesis. Let us now consider twospeciflc examples.

Consider first ve¡bs with the prefix re- meaning 'again'. In the majority ofcases, the subcategorization frames of such ve¡bs are inhedted from theirbases (though not all frames of the bases a¡e thus inh€rited). A typical casers thus provided by a word like reconsider. where the subcateso¡izationframes for consider are given below, wi¡h those also used tor retonsidermarked by a dagger:

(24 t -l_NP

- NP[+ reflexive]-NP 4J NP-Np /o V- NP Object Complement (i.e. NP or Ap)_ that s

t - rd¡-word S

(These subcategorization frames are gleaned f¡om Col/¡zs COBLTILD EnglíshLanguage Díctionary and The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englísh,both of which provide such info¡mation as a matter of course.) This fitsperfectly with Williams's version of percolation, based on the RishthandHead Rule. For it to nt with the not¡on thar prefixes are heads, and thatsubcategorization frames a¡e inhe¡ited through these heads, it would have tobe the case that all verbs with re- (or ar least a substantial majority) fit thesame frames: are int¡ansitive, transitive and allow a following clause

27

I

z6

LAURIE BAUE R

introduced by a wl-word. This is not the case. Most verbs with this prefix aretransitive, a few only intransitive; many (but less than half) can be eithertransitive or intransitive; very few allow a following clause introduced by aw¿-word; othe¡ arguments appear to be dete¡mined by the base o¡ thesemantics rather than by the prefix - for example re-elect arLd rename allowthe structu¡e V + NP + Object Complement, but this is a function ofe/e¿, andnqme, r'ol a function of the prefix- The general picture, therefore, fails tosupport a notion of percolation based on prefixes as heads if percolationfollows heads.

There a¡e also some verbs which break with the majority pattem and allowthe addition of subcategorization f¡ames. For example, generate is atransitive ve¡b, b\tl rcgenerate caÍ be intransitive. The same is true of/eJtocftas opposed to stoct, Iterute rs,ie any case, a very rare word, but the examplesin the Oxford English Díctionary do not illustrate it followed by that + S,which is a common subcategorization frame for reiterate. Similarly, t¿sral€is a rare word, but appears not to occur followed by as, which is common forreinstate. Frnally, ¡¿r¡ew is marked in the -BB1 Combinatory Dictíonary assubcategorizing for /or, while ylew does not take this preposition. In all ofthese cases, subcategodzation f¡ames are added with prefixation.

He¡e, then, the¡e are a number of instances where the subcatego¡izationframes required by the derivative are not predictable, either on the basis ofthe elements which form the input to the WFR or by some generalredundancy ¡ule. This kind of state of affai¡s is predicted not to occur bypercolation theory, yet it is not unusual.

Consider next deye¡bal verbs with the prefix dú-. Again the norm seems tobe for the subcategodzation frames of such derivatives to be inherited fromthe base. Some cases such as disclaim, dísentangle, dísjoinfhave an intransitiveuse which is not matched by the intransitive use of the base verb- Withdisabuse, dispossess there is an argument marked by the preposition o/whichcannot be found in the base ve¡b. Again subcategorization frames a¡e addedwith prefixation, in a way which is not predictable from general grammaticalprinciples. In this case, however, there is anothe¡ point to be made. In quitea large number ofcases, the derivative using the prefix du- takes a followingprepositional phrase using the preposition from, even though there is nocorresponding argument fo¡ the base vetb. Exanples ate disappear, discharge,disconnect, disembark, dísengage, disentangle, díslotlge, dismount, disqualify(The BBI Combinatory Dictíonarf of English). The source of this./rorr isclearly the prefix, both because of its recurrent nature, and because of thesemantics. This, now, contradicts William's view of percolation if sub-categorization f¡ames are inherited from heads, but supports a view on whichthe prefix is the head. The evidence from subcategorization frames of thesevsrbs thus appears to be inconsistent in picking out a head.

BE-HEADING THE WORD

43. Aryument linking

The point, I think, needs to be made that argument l inking (Will iams, r98r b)does not provide an alternative to subcategorization, and does not solve theproblems discussed above. Argument linking in effect provides a way ofdealing with the redundancy rules lor adding subcategqrization f¡amcs. Thecasss tbat have been discussed here deal with cases where redundancy rulesare not sumcient. Furthermore, Will iams (r98r b: rro) says that he assumesa subcategorization theory in which 'a head ol a phrase can determine thecategory of the phrases that appear in that phrase with that head,. It isprecisely the notion of head that is being queried here, and thus the basis ofWilliams's discussion.

4.4. Summary

In this section it has been argued that if feature percolation of syntacticfeatures is accepted, then it must also be accepted

(i) that syntactic features a¡e also inherited by other mech¿nisms,(i i) that percolation does not always function as it is supposed ro, in that

(a) percolation does not always follow heads;(b) syntactic features are not always inherited f¡om individual

formatives in a word;(c) subcatego¡ization features are not always inherited in a principled

manner;(iii) that percolation cannot be used as evidence for headedness rn any

straight-forward way.

The implications of this will be outlined in the flnal section.

5. SuMMrNc up

In Section 2 the c¡iteria generally used to determine heads in syntax wereoutlined. In Section 3 these were applied to the morphological structure ofEnglish, and it was shown that they fail to agree on what the head rn anEnglish word is. It was suggested that the main uses of the notion (and thusthe best criteda to use) were percolation of major categories, and cross-linguistic generalizations about head-modifier ordering. In Section 4, it wasargued that evidence from percolation in English was not pa¡ticula¡ly good,since if it is the case that pe¡colation follows heads, the eyidence on what thehead is is contradictory from this criterion. There is thus a major clash,between the earlier comment that the major value of the notion of head inmorphology is percolation, and the conclusion that percolation does notprovide coherent evidence on headedness.

The obvious, though not necessarily the correct, conclusion to draw is that

!

:

28 29

LAURIE BA UER

heads have no place in morphoiogy. Certainly, ifthey have a role to play, thisrole needs to be defined much mo¡e carefully than has been the case up untilnow. Fo¡ example, heads rnight be saved if it was assumed that only majorcategories percolated through heads, rathe¡ than subcategorization; poLen-tiation, and the like. This raises other quesrions (why just major categories?how does subcategorization wo¡k ? is such a diluted notion of

"hea<l ne".ssary

or worth keepi¡g?), but is just one indication that the notion of head mavnevertheless have some role to play. Another point to be borne in mind isthat nea¡ly all the evidence in this paper has been taken from English. Otherlanguages may behave in a more regular way with respect to hádedness.

Perhaps the most ironic conclusion that can be drawn is that Wilhams,sRighthand Head Rule, while it appears to have been set up withoutconsidering all the ¡elevant factors, probably works about as well as anyother generalization would for English. In that sense, Williams is vindicated.But I would say that the real point is that no generalization about heads inEnglish morphology is going to remain tenable unless ,head' is dehmitedvery specifically. Given the things that .head' is supposed to do at themoment, we would not be much wo¡se oñ'without ou¡ heads.Aulhoi.\ nJdt?í Dcpd m.nr ot L¡ngut:tt.,

Victa a Uniwrsitj, o[ llettinston,PO Box 600.We ¡ngtan,Nch Zealand.

BE-HEADING THE WORD

Culler, A., Hawkins, J & cilligan, c. (1985). The suñxing preference: a processingexplanation. Linguist¡cs 23. ,723 ,758.

Hawkins, J. A. & Gilligan, c. (r988). Preñxing and sufñxing universals in relalion to basrc worclorder. Lingua 74. 2t9-259.

Hudso¡, R. A. (¡98o). Constituency and dcpendency. Linguistics 18. t.t9 t8.Hudson, R. A. (1987). Zwicky on heads. JL 23. ro9 r32.Lieber, R. (r98r). On the organization of the lexicon.I¡diana Universiry Lineuisrics Cjub.Lyons, J. (1968). Intrcdu.tion b rhearctical lingur-lticr. Cambridge: Cambridge University p¡ess.Lyo¡s, J. (I97?)..temr,¡ti¿r. Cambridge I Cambridge University Press.Marchand, H. (r969). fáe categoñes and types of prcsent-day English h,otd-formation. M,rnchen

C. H. Beck. Second edition.Matthews, P. H. (1972). Infectional noryhologr: a theoretical rtud) based on uspects of Latin

yetb .onjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Matthews, P. H. (r98¡). Sln¡dn. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.Plank, F. (r98I). Morpholoeische (b)Regulaúñren. 'fíibingen: Gunrer Narr.Robinson, J. J. (¡97o). Dependency structure and transformational rules. ¿g 46. 259 285.Roepe¡, T. & Siegel, M. (r978). A lexical transformatioü for verbal compoünds. ¿/r 9. r99 260.Selkirk, E. O. (rg82l. The sjhtar of woldr. Cambridge, Mass.: MtT press.Stechow, A. voD (r984). Compari¡g sernantic theories of comparison. -roarnal of Semantics 3_

¡ 7ú.Wil l iams, E. ( I98¡a). On the not ions ' lexical ly retated ' and 'head ofa wotd' . LIn12.245 2j4.Williams, E. (¡98¡ b). Argument structr¡re and morphology. The Lingu¿\tic Reriew r. 8r rt4.Zwicky, A. M. (1985). Heads. l¿ 2r. r -29.

REFERENCES

Allan' -K

(r 936 a). ¿¡)rgüistic meaning. 2 vols. London & New york: Routledge & Kegan paüi.Allan,K. (i986 b). Review ofJ. Rusiecki, ldJ¿¿ ti,¡es and cohparison in Engtiiiirli-*,i" ,tuay.Lg 62. 716.Allen. M. ll9?8] Moryhotograt inwsr¡garjo¡s. phD thesis, Universily of Connecricur.i " ,1.^." I

t tq7-t) . me sramnar o/ l "are. Cambridge: Cambridgc únivcrs¡¡y pres\ .Ancerson. r . ( ¡g^dol . towardr dependency morphology. the sLructure of the Basque verb. In

",]*:.":l,fj * !*"', c (ts8.tr. ptihciptes a¡ aepenaency pnonoto|¡. camuriage:tamsriogeunrve¡sllv Press

Bduer. L. ( ra8l) . Engt ish $ad- lomat ion. ( arnbndge: Cambridse Uni!ers i l \ pres\óauer. r . ( rsóE). A.descr ip l j \e g¿p rn morpholog). yearbook ol Vorp\ology r . 11. z¡Ueard. R- l rq82). The pturdt as ¿ lerrcat der i rauon. C/o\rd re. r33.r iA.

"-Bloomfield. L. ' Ig35t. tanSuage London: Al len & Un\ in.Carlson, C. &.Rorper. T. (i98D. Morphology and subcategorization : case ¡nd the unmarkecl

compre\ verb. rn Hoekslra, L, van der Hulsl, H. & Moortgat, M. (e¿,s) Lexicat grannar,Dordrechti Fo¡is. t21 t6n_

choms*). N- r tgt5t . *pcr i o.1 lhe ú?oty o[ i i .nrat . C¿mbridee. Mass.: MtT pre$.!nomsKy. N. (1970) Remarks on nominal¡zat ion. Iü Jacobs, R. & Rosenbaum, p. (eds)

.:^:!iin_,,"::!,!2! rrunsto,matiunút crcmnal. warrham. Ma...:ci"n ¡¡;_;;;.

'

LnomsKy. N. & rfalle, M. (r968). The saund pauem ol Englisr. New york: üaroe¡ & Row.cresswelr. M (,e76). rhe semanrics or acgrei. rn nairee, -r., i.a.i, uii,iii ií.^^.,, N"*

York : Academic Press. 26r,202_Cruse. D. A. (1986). Lexicat senantics. Cambridge: Camb¡idge University press.

3o