A head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the adjectives, the possessives, and the relative clauses. In a verb phrase the head is the verb and the dependents are its arguments (subject, object, etc.). An example of such a language is Nahuatl. The concept was proposed by Johanna Nichols in 1986, and has come to be widely used as a basic category in linguistic typology.
| Phrase type | Head | Dependents | Global distribution map (WALS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun phrase | Main noun | adjectives, possessives, relative clause | Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases |
| Verb phrase | Verb | verb arguments | Marking in the Clause |
Languages may be head-marking in verb phrases and dependent-marking in noun phrases—such as most Bantu languages—or vice versa, and it has been argued that the subject rather than the verb is the head of a clause, so "head-marking" is not necessarily a coherent typology. Nonetheless, languages which are head-marking in both noun and verb phrases are common enough to make the term useful for typological description.
Read more about Head-marking Language: Geographical Distribution
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“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)