User:Ziyasummer/sandbox

'''Linguistics student at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C, Canada.

This Wikipedia username is for a collaborative linguistics course project only, focusing on Head-directionality Parameter in syntax, collaborating with User:LingAnthNerd, User:Xmizuro, and User:Tsadler00

For more information, please reach the editor at ziyasummer@gmail.com.

= Head Parameter = This page aims to provide a detailed annotated bibliography of works that focus on Head Parameters. The research component of this page is mainly aiming at creating a larger database for linguistic topics relating to syntax and its aspects.

1970s

 *  Coates, J. (1971)  Denominal adjectives: A study in syntactic relationships between modifier and head 

The main focus is on understanding the different types of adjectives and nouns and comparing the location of the semantic stress in compound words to see which part of the word is the head. This article extends the understand of the wikipedia article beyond just larger syntactic trees and looks into phenomena that may have started out as lexical and functional words but have been combined into a single world in common orthography. This goes further to challenge people to think beyond the orthography to what headedness actually means syntactically and semantically. The author’s focus on English examples limits his perspective to attempting to establish rules without actually seeing if they are universal or otherwise. The article is helpful and interesting, but the diagrams are unclear and could use more explanation and markings to decode what the tables are actually comparing.


 *  Hsieh, H. (1977)  Noun-modifier order as a consequence of VSO order 

This article aims to investigate the correlation between the head direction in NPs and the basic word order cross-linguistically. The author argues that the head-initial structure in NPs arises from verb-initial arrangement in basic word orders in sentences instead of the verb-object order in VPs. In order to prove this claim, the author conducted a wide range of survey in various language families or subfamilies. With comprehensive cross-linguistic evidences, this article invalidates previous hypothesis about how verb-object sequence results in head-initial NPs. From a typological linguistics perspective, the author provides a compelling characterization of the correlation between head direction and the basic word order in a variety of languages across the world. His argument strengthens the foundation for comparative syntax. His findings expand the horizon for future head directional studies. Although this study was conducted in 1970s, to the readers, the rigorous logic, the large scale of investigation, and the straightforward approaches all make this article very impressive and convincing.

1980s

 *  Flynn, S., & Espinal, I. (1985)  Head-initial/head-final parameter in adult Chinese L2 acquisition of English 

They investigated the relationship between the head parameter and second language acquisition. They argued that the head parameter is reset during second language acquisition and that the head parameter is differentiated by the parameter that governs word order. This paper will support that the head parameter is associated with language acquisition. It will also demonstrate a perspective that treats the head parameter as separate from word order. This paper is written from a perspective that believes in Universal Grammar which is why the head parameter is used to explain language acquisition. The paper also supports the parameter setting model for second language acquisition created by Flynn. There may be some bias in how the results are interpreted such that they fit the model. I feel that this paper uses logical and strong arguments to defend their model. The experiment was also well designed and the comparison to other languages greatly supported their arguments.


 *  Rijikhoff, J. (1986)  Word order universals revisited: the principle of Head Proximity 

The author looks at Principle of Head-Proximity as the main drive behind the constituent ordering in syntax. It proves that PHP and its Principles of Constituent Ordering can be applied to other phenomena that were previously treated separately. It also leads to a reduction of the Principles of Constituent Ordering. This article takes close account of the head parameter and the heads that take part in the Principle of Head-Proximity, and can hence shed new light on the topic. Moreover, it also shed light on the evolution of syntactic analysis. The author uses peer-reviewed data and theories, and writes to an audience of scholars, and hence is point of view is strictly academic. I personally liked this article because of its style: the reader is carried through the different steps and easily grasps concepts proposed, reaching the article’s purpose.

1990s

 *  Hoeksema, J. (1992)  The head parameter in morphology and syntax 

This paper discusses issues that arise when parameter settings are used to explain word-order variation and the acquisition of word order. He argues that word order and the head parameter are the same and that there may be more than one word order in a single language. Also, the acquisition device needs to separate the data and learn the different orders. This also demonstrates an opposing view of the head parameter and word order variation. It also suggests that not all languages are consistently head final or initial and that the head parameter complicates language acquisition. This is written from a perspective that insists that the word order and head parameter are the same. One shortcoming of this paper is that the evidence for his arguments are not strong. I feel that this paper is a simple introduction to the issues of head parameter but it creates more questions than answers.


 *  Fukui, N. (1993)  Parameters and optionality 

In this article, Fukui argues that in a head-initial language such as English, leftward movement of an object requires an obligatory driving force (topicalization/wh-movement) because it goes against the parameter value CPR = X0 > ymax, while rightward movement maintains it and thus can be optional. However, in head-final Japanese, the opposite is found (with CPR = Ymax > X0). Further, Japanese does not contain an obligatory driving force which would develop rightward movement over a head, thus Japanese is very strictly head-final. I think this article will help with determining the importance of having a head and whether its placement is initial or final, through the application of the movement experiment Fukui performs and the results derived. This article is written from the perspective of a native Japanese linguist with experience both the English and Japanese language at high post-secondary level (near-fluency, if not); however, I cannot find if Fukui has ample background in Chinese language to support the given data. Seems very well thought-out and thorough; however, the language used is pretty technical, lending to a more intermediate-level read. I like how Fukui applies the theory to another language outside the comparative Japanese and English. I would like to see other language families (with respectively varying head parameters) analyzed using this theory to see it’s results when Universally applied.

2000s

 *  O'Grady, W., & Lee, M., & Choo, M., (2001)  The Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Heritage and Non-Heritage Learners of Korean as a Second Language: A Comparative Study 

The goal of the paper is to investigate the ability of recognize heads and their relative clause structures in Korean and to compare this ability between heritage and non-heritage learners. Using data gathered through a comprehension experiment, the author guides the readers through syntactic heads, and the discerned meanings; it also shows how English head-initial relative clauses is easier to learn than Korean head-final relative clauses. Providing information on the importance of the head parameter in Korean syntax, this paper also shows how heritage learners don’t have any apparent advantage over non-heritage learners (they usually do in areas of vocabulary, pronunciation, comprehension). The detailed analysis of data as well as a rich use of (referenced) previous research is contrasted by the limited use of examples (most likely due the narrow focus of this paper)


 *  Takita, K. (2009)  If Chinese Is Head-Initial, Japanese Cannot Be 

The author approaches the word order in Japanese relative to the one in Mandarin Chinese after many languages (Mandarin Chinese as well) were found to be underlyingly head-initial. The author proves that Japanese is genuinely head-final and that the Universal Grammar is equipped with a directionality parameter admitting both head-final and head-initial languages. This is in turn relevant to our topic, given that it helps us with adding information on Head Parameter universally. Moreover, the more cross-linguistic references and data present, the more reliable our project grows. The author seems to be motivated by showing that Universal Grammar has a directionality parameter, and her approach is very objective, taking into account previous research and contemporary views. However, it seems that this study was written for academic-use mostly, as it references previous approaches and theories built on syntax. She offers enough data to prove her claim, yet the glossing and translations can be overwhelming at times. Conclusively, her study straightforwardly approaches her prediction concluding that Head Parameter is present in the Universal Grammar; I personally find this a great approach as it states both goals and thinking process.

2010-14

 *  Liu, H. (2010)  Dependency direction as a means of word-order typology: A method based on dependency treebanks 

The main goals of this article are to introduce a method for word-order typology based on dependency treebanks, and to demonstrate how this method could improve traditional language typology studies. Previous word-order typological studies usually classify languages into a limited number of discrete types based on the linear order and binary relation of grammatical elements. The author in this article, however, proposes a statistical and corpus-based approach that is proved can provide more complete and fine-grained typological analysis about head directional distribution. The results imply that languages can be typologized along a continuum with head-initial and head-final as the two ends. Although several considerable factors might slightly influence the results, such as the annotation scheme, the genre variety in the selection of some samples, overall, this study provides a novel and advanced approach for modern language typology in characterizing head directional parameters cross-linguistically.


 *  Ledegeway, A. (2012)  From latin to romance: configurationality, functional categories and Head Marking 

Ledgeway explores some of the language shifts between Latin and Romance languages. Specifically, he argues against the idea that most of the structural differences resulted from a shift from a synthetic language to an analytic one. Rather, the change was a combination of shifting to a more analytic language and developing more internal structure. This article helps show how X-bar theory relates different languages to each other and how syntactic structure is tied to language change. It also explains how some languages can appears to be un-directional, when really the language just allows more than one location for the head. Written with a focus on historical linguistics, the article shows the flexibility of languages and how relatively new theories contribute understanding to “dead” languages as well as living ones. Overall, the well-written structure contributes to the understanding of the reader and the tree-diagrams are really helpful when trying to understand the linguistic significance of hierarchical vs. linear linguistic structure. It would be interesting to see how other synthetic languages do or do not require the head parameter.

Continuum of head-placement: Tesnière 1967
In language typology, some scholars argue that there is no absolute head-initial or head-final languages. According to this approach, it is true that some languages have more head-initial or head-final elements than other languages do, but almost all the languages contains both head-initial and head-final elements. Therefore, rather than classifying them into fixed categories, languages can be arranged on a continuum with head-initial and head-final as the ends based on the frequency distribution of their dependency directions.

Corpus-based statistical analysis of head-placement : Liu 2010
The evidences of this gradient approach come from a large amount of statistical analysis of the syntactic dependency relation in various of languages, in the light of dependency grammar. Haitao Liu proposed dependency treebank based method for language typology. He investigated 20 languages using corpora with dependency direction as typological index. The results showed that some languages are more head-initial or head-final than others. However, no evidence is found for pure head-initial or head- final languages in the sample. Each language contains some constructions with each order.

According to the percentage of head-initial or head-final dependencies, these languages are plotted on a continuum. For instance, referring to the sample languages we analyzed above, Japanese has more head-final elements more other sample languages and therefore is arranged closer to the head-final end of the continuum; English and German, however, have mixed head-initial and head-final dependencies. Therefore, they are plotted in the relatively intermediate position on the continuum. Gbe is somewhere between English/German and Japanese due to many of its phrases possibly having both head-initial and/or head-final constructions.

Correlating lexical inventory with head-placement: Polinsky 2012
The inconsistency of headedness in language typology is also observed and examined in lexical inventories. Polinsky (2012) proposes that the proportions of different lexical categories in lexical inventories within and across languages may have a correlation with headedness types of languages.

She investigated the noun-verb ratios across 5 headedness sub-types: rigid head-final, non-rigid head-final, clearly head-initial, etc. Basic headedness types and examples are shown in the chart below

She counts the number of verbs versus the number of nouns among a variety of languages. This noun-to-verb ratio is investigated across 5 broad-based headedness sub-types: rigid head-final, non-rigid head-final, clearly head-initial, etc. Basic headedness types and examples are shown in the chart below.

According to the results, the investigated languages can be divided into three groups based on the distribution of noun-verb ratios, which shows that there is a clear correlation between headedness and the ratio of verbs in the lexical inventories of a language. The correlation is robust. Languages with the paucity of simple verbs appear as a significant clustering in the rigidly head-final type, such as Japanese, whereas verb-rich languages are mainly plotted into the head-initial type.