Head Marking and Dep - Nichols

Linguistic Society of America
Head-Marking and Dependent-Marking Grammar Author(s): Johanna Nichols Reviewed work(s): Source: Language, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 56-119 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/415601 . Accessed: 26/01/2012 14:50
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GRAMMAR HEAD-MARKINGAND DEPENDENT-MARKING

JOHANNANICHOLS
University of California, Berkeley

of relationsmay appearon eitherthe head or the marking grammatical Morphological relationsdependentmemberof the constituent(oron both, or on neither).Grammatical and whole languages-may be classified accordingto their propensityfor using one of relationsamongvariousmarking these types of marking.Implicational patternscan be theirgramstated:languagesdisplaya tendencyto use one type consistentlythroughout mar.The differencein patternsprovidesa typologicalmetricanda functional explanation for certainword-order preferences.For historicallinguistics,it providesa diagnostically the conservativefeatureanda clue to geneticrelatedness.Although head-marked pattern is cross-linguistically favored, grammatical theory is stronglybiased towardthe dependent-marked patternsthat happento dominatein Indo-European.*
This 1. INTRODUCTION. paper points out a simple descriptive fact which has
considerableimplicationsfor typology, historicallinguistics, and grammatical that theory. In view of the breadthand depthof its implications,it is surprising this phenomenonhas gone unnoticedfor so long. One reason for such neglect may lie in the fact that it is easily observedand describedin dependencygramthat forms the backbone mar, but is less obvious to the constituency grammar of contemporarymainstreamWesterntheory. Anotherreason may be the fact that mainstreamtheory, despite considerable efforts to test ideas on exotic languages,happensto have looked almostexclusively at those languageswhich differ little from Indo-Europeanwith regardto the phenomenonat issue. The analysis proposed here is built on only two concepts, both of them a theory-independent and straightforward non-theoretical.One is HEADEDNESS, notion which in fact figures as a primitivein almost all theories-and which, althoughnot directly given in linguisticdata, is often directly reflected in such structuralfeatures as word order. The other is the presence and location of
of overt morphological MARKING syntactic relations-the fact that a given word
bears a given affix, while anotherdoes not. The presence and location of morphological markersis directly given in linguisticdata. The grammatical phenomenonat issue is the fact that syntacticrelationscan
* Much of the researchfor this project was done in Moscow (1975-76) and Tbilisi (1979-80, Researchand ExchangesBoardand Fulbright-Hays 1981, 1984)with the supportof International Faculty Research Abroadfellowships from the Office of Educationand the then Departmentof of Health, Education,and Welfare.I am gratefulto the RussianLanguageDepartment Moscow of State Universityand to the ForeignDivision and the CaucasianLanguagesDepartment Tbilisi State University.Deepest thanksgo to the friendsand colleagueswho sharedwith me theirnative intuitionson languagesof the Caucasus. For comments and examples, I am indebted to Joan Bresnan, Neusa Carson, Jim Collins, Jon Dayley, Scott DeLancey, MatthewDryer, ThomasV. Gamkrelidze,OrinGensler, Victor Golla, Dee Ann Holisky, GaryHolland,John Kingston,Tom DavidShaul,Alan O'Connor, Igor Larsen,MayaMachavariani, Mel'cuk,LarryMorgan,Catherine Timberlake,Robert Van Valin, KennethWhistler,AnthonyWoodbury,and Karl Zimmer.I am for and also gratefulto Ann Kalinowskifor statisticalconsultation KennethWhistler programming. endorseall my views. An My thanksshould not be taken to imply that these people unanimously earlierversion of this paperwas presentedat the 1982LSA AnnualMeeting(San Diego).
56
HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR
57
be morphologicallymarkedeither on the head of a constituent, or on the dependent. Exx. 1-2 are a minimalpair in this respect. Both are noun phrases with possessed noun heads and possessor dependentnouns. Here and below, heads are indicated by superscriptH, affixal markersby M:
(1) English (2) Hungarian the man-M's Hhouse az ember Hhdz-Ma
the man house-3sg. In 1, the possessive construction is marked by the genitive case on the dependent noun man. In 2, it is markedby a pronominalsuffix on the head noun
is RELATION one and the same-possessor haz 'house'. The SYNTACTIC noun
dependent on possessed noun-but the principles for markingthat relation morphologicallyare diametricallyopposed. Throughoutthis paper, I will use the term 'syntactic relation' as in the preI ceding paragraph. assume that the syntax of a sentence is an abstractnetwork of relations which are not configurationallydefined, but are best viewed as labeled. They are binary, directed relationsbetween a head and a dependent. Most important, syntactic relations are absolutely independentof the morphology (or other means) that signals them. (The natureof the morphological markingdoes have some impact on the characterof the connections between words in a sentence, as will be argued in ?5.22 below; but it does not affect syntactic relations as that term is defined here.) Linguists of divergenttheoreticalpersuasionsare in almost complete agreement as to what is the head and what is the non-headin a given construction; cf. Tesniere 1966, Garde 1977, Mel'cuk 1979, 1981, Bresnan 1982 (passim), Marantz1984.Briefly, the head is the word whichgoverns, or is subcategorized for-or otherwise determinesthe possibilityof occurrenceof-the other word. It determinesthe category of its phrase. The dependencyrelationsin the constructions discussed in this paper are shown in Table 1.1
LEVEL Phrase HEAD possessed noun noun adposition predicate auxiliaryverb main-clausepredicate
TABLE1.
Clause Sentence
DEPENDENT possessor modifyingadjective object of adposition and arguments adjuncts lexical ('main')verb relativeor subordinate clause
The function of the morphologyof government,agreement,cross-reference etc. is to identify these syntactic relationsby appropriately markingeither the
1 The entry 'argumentsand adjuncts'is intendedto subsume subjects, objects, and the other nominalfunctionsknown variouslyas non-corerelations,adjuncts,circumstantials, obliquesetc. I will occasionallyuse 'actant' as generic for 'argument' and 'adjunct'. The head of a clause is normallya verb; the entry 'predicate'is used here becauseof the crucial example presentedby the Nootkan languages,discussed in Jacobsen 1979.
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LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986)
head (as in 2) or the dependent(as in 1). I will thus speak of syntactic relations as HEAD-MARKED or DEPENDENT-MARKED: this distinctionis the centralprinciple of this paper. Aside from this dichotomy, morphologycan signal syntactic dependencyin four ways. First, the morphologicalmarkermay simply register the presence of syntactic dependency-as does the Persian and Tadzhik 'izafet' (Abaev et al. 1982:111)or the Semitic 'status constructus':
(3) a. Tadzhik b. Persian (4) Hebrew
HkUh-Mi
Hkuh-Me
baland 'high mountain' bolind sefer 'school', lit. 'book house'
mountainhigh
Hb-Me-t
house-of book In 3, the suffix -il-e marks the noun as having a dependent-without further of specifyingthe type of dependency,the gender/number/person the dependent or head, or the like. In 4, bet is the construct form of the noun bayit 'house', in which phonologicalchanges in the stem markit as having a dependent. Second, the morphologicalaffix can mark not only the presence, but also the TYPE of dependency. This kind of markingis quite common. Noun cases are a good example: an ergative, dative, or accusative case marksa noun not relationto only as being dependenton a verb, but also as being in a particular it: agent or subject, indirectobject, direct object etc. Similarly,IE verb agreement identifiesa noun not merelyas dependent,but also as specificallysubject. Third, the morphologicalaffix may, in addition,index particular inflectional or lexical categories of either the head or the dependent,markingthem on the other constituent. For instance, person/numberagreementin the IE verb indexes propertiesof the (dependent)subjecton the (head)verb. Thatof Abkhaz, shown in 24 below, indexes the same properties(plus, in part, gender)of three differentactants on the verb. In languageshavinggenderclasses, these classes are typically indexed on the verb. Similarly,gender/number agreementin the IE attributiveadjective indexes the lexical propertiesof the head noun on the dependentadjective, while case agreementindexes its syntacticproperties.All these agreement patterns, in addition to indexing various properties of one constituent on another, also directly signal the presence and type of syntactic relations. HenceforthI will speak of morphological forms as MARKING the presence and type of dependency, but as INDEXING variousgrammatical lexical and categories of the head or dependent on the other. can Fourth,morphologicalmarking be purelyinternal:it can index properties of the head on the head itself, as when aspect is markedon Russian verbs, or when subject agreement varies accordingto the tense or conjugationalclass of the verb. It can index properties of dependents on the dependents themselves, as when IE case endings also signal gender and numberof the noun bearingthe case, or when nouns in Bantu and some Australianlanguagescarry markers of their own gender class. Such patterns amount to the markingof heads as heads and of dependents as dependents, in that Russian aspect iden-
GRAMMAR AND DEPENDENT-MARKING HEAD-MARKING
59
tifies a verb as a verb, and case identifies a noun as a noun. Purely internal markingof these sorts will not be dealt with furtherin this study.2 Markingmay take forms other than straightaffixation.For example, relative clauses are frequently marked as such by deletion of the coreferentialnoun or by a relative pronoun. In the Semitic status constructus, the head noun is marked by phonological changes. In speaking of morphologicalmarking, then, I also include forms that mightnot usually be consideredmorphological, although most of the discussion to follow does concern ordinaryaffixal morphology. Languages of the isolating type will be left out of the discussion enwords', 'function words', 'empty words' tirely-although their 'grammatical etc. presumablyalso exhibit head-marking dependent-marking and tendencies. In what follows, ?2 illustratesthe two polar markingpatternsat the various levels of syntactic structure,and also illustratesnon-polarpatterns;??3-5 show the impact which recognition of the two patterns can have for typology, historical linguistics, and theory. It is not the purpose of this paper to provide a typology, a history, or a theory of any linguistic phenomenonor set of languages; rather,its goal is to demonstratethat the existence of the two marking patternshas significantimplicationsfor many branchesof linguistics, and that both should be explicitly accommodatedby grammatical theories. 2. EXAMPLES. Schematic examples of head-marked and dependent-marked patterns are shown below, with illustrationsfrom real languages. In the schematic representations, specifically head-final order and suffixal morphology are indicated;the real-language examples often follow this order. Scanningthe examples will show that Chechen, a languageof the Northeast Caucasus, consistently uses dependent-marking strategies, while Abkhaz, a languageof the Northwest Caucasus, consistently uses head-marking strategies. The respective sets of examples give clear profiles of the two types.3
2.1. THEPOSSESSIVE PHRASE these two patterns.4 has (5) a. Dependent-marked: Noun1+MGEN HNoun2 b. Head-marked: Noun1 HNoun2+ MPronominal affixNl
indexingcategories of one memberon the other correspondsto the spirit of Sapir's distinction(1921:101)of pure relationalvs. concrete relationalconcepts, respectively, althoughit is not clear from Sapir'sdiscussion whether he would agree with me on the classificationof every category. My notion of purely internalmarkingincludes categoriesthat Sapirclassifies as relational(e.g. tense, mood); to judge from his discussionon p. 87, his reasonfor classifyingthem as relational was the fact that such categories are often bound up with subjectagreement,a relationalcategory. 3 Abbreviationsused in the examples are standard:N(oun), V(erb), A(djective), GEN(itive),
2
I believe the distinctionof marking presenceor type of dependencyvs. the
? scriptionsymbols are standard,except for the use of 7 for the glottalstop in Mayanand (e.g. k?) for labialization Abkhazand Shuswap.Transcription in follows thatof the sourceunless otherwise stated. 4 In schematicformulae,subscriptletters standfor affixes marking presenceof, or indexing the featuresof, a word shown with a capitalletter such as N or A.
ERG(ative)etc.; lsg.
= first person singular, 2pl. = second person plural, 3 = third person. Tran-
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LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)
The pronominalaffix of the head-marked patternagrees with the first noun; it is sometimes called a possessive affix. An example of the dependent-marked type 5a is from Chechen:
(6)
de:-Mn
Ha:xca 'father's money'
father-GEN money The head-markedtype 5b can be illustratedfrom Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979:116): (7) sara Msd-Hy nf 'my house' I/me my-house
(8)a-c'k0'an My-HynAf
the-boy his-house
'the boy's house'
2.2. THEADPOSITIONAL PHRASE shows these patterns. (9) a. Dependent-marked: Noun+MCase HAdposition b. Head-marked: Noun HAdposition + MAFFN A dependent-marked example (9a) can be given from Chechen: (10) be:ra-Mna Ht'e 'on the child' child-DAT on Particularly clear examples of such phrases come fromIE languages such as
Russian, where the prepositionnot only triggersan oblique case on its object, but governs a specific case:
(11) H5
with brother-INSTR
brat-Ma
brat-Mom
'with (my, one's, etc.) brother' 'without (my, etc.) brother'
toward brother-DAT Head-marked examples (9b) come from Abkhaz (14) and Tzutujil Mayan (15):
without brother-GEN 'toward (my, etc.) brother' (13)Hk brat-Mu
(12) Hbez
(14) a-j]yas Ma- q'fl 'at the river' (Hewitt, 103) the-river its-at
(15) Mruu-Hmajk jar aachi
3sg.-because.of the man 'by the man; because of the man' (Dayley 1981:216)
2.3. THEATTRIBUTIVE PHRASE shows these patterns. MAFFN HNoun (16) a. Dependent-marked: Adjective + b. Head-marked: Adjective HNoun + MAFFA
Examples of the dependent-marked type (16a) come from Russian (17) and Chechen (18): 'green house' (17) zelen-Myj Hdom
green-NOM. .MASC SG SG house(NOM. .MASC) 'green book' Hknigu zelen- Muju green- ACCSGFEMbook(ACC. .FEM) . . SG
61
(18) Md-ovxa Hxi
'hot water' 'hot milk'
hot water(d-)
Mj-ovxa Hsura
hot milk( j-) the initial consonant of the adjective shows its agreementwith (In Chechen, the covert gender class of the head noun.) Head-markedexamples (16b) include 3a-b, above, and the following from Shuswap (Kuipers 1974:78):
(19) wist Mt-HCitx0 'high house'
high REL-house (Shuswap has a minimaltwo-case system which opposes the absolutive, used on core arguments,to the relative, used on oblique actants. The relative case is also regularlyused, as in this example, on a noun modifiedby an attributive.)
show these patterns. RELATIONS 2.4. CLAUSE
(20) a. Dependent-marked: Noun + MCase Noun + MCase Noun + MCase HVerb b. Head-marked:
+ + Nounl Noun2 Noun3 HVerb+ MAFFN1 MAFFN2 MAFFN3
type 20a come fromChechen(21), Japanese Examplesof the dependent-marked (22), and Dyirbal(23):
(21) da:-Ms wo?a-Mna urs-0 Htu:xira.
son-DAT knife-NOMstruck father-ERG 'The father stabbed the son.' (lit. 'fatherstruck son with knife')
hana MO Hageta. tomodati Mni (22) Boku Mga SUBJ friend DATflowers OBJ gave I 'I gave flowers to my friend.' (Kuno 1973:129) baygul yasangu (23) balan djugumbil ART.NOM ART.ERG man. ERG woman. NOM balgan. baygu yuguygu
ART.INSTR Stick.MINS Hhit
'The man is hittingthe woman with a stick.' (Dixon 1972:95) In all three examples, the nominal cases are the only bearers of syntactic information;the verbs do not agree with anything. Head-markedexamples (20b) come from Abkhaz (24) and Tzutujil(25): (24) a-xdc'a a-ph?3s a-?q0?' M-Ml3My-Hte-yt. the-man the-womanthe-book it-to.her-he-gave-FINITE 'The man gave the woman the book.' (Hewitt, 36)
(25) x-M0-Mkee-Htij tzyaq ch'ooyaa7. ASP-3sg.-3pl.-ate clothes rats
'Rats ate the clothes.' (Dayley, 417) In both these examples, all nouns are caseless; the clause relationsare marked only by verbal affixes which index person and number, and whose ordering indexes the syntactic relations of the nouns.
62
2.5. RELATIVIZATION displays the following patterns.5 [[M{0, PRO} ...]RC ... HNoun ...] (26) a. Dependent-marked: b. Head-marked: [[... Noun .. ]RC M{0, PRO} H...]
In inter-clause relations, a word in the main clause is the head, and the subordinateor embeddedclause is the dependent.Thus, in relativization,the head is the main-clausenoun, and the dependentis the relativeclause. In dependentmarkedrelativization,the relative-clausenoun is affected, typicallyby deletion relwhile the main clause is left intact. In head-marked or pronominalization, ativization, the main clause is affected, typically by deletion or pronominalization of the noun; the relative clause is intact, and is often indistinguishable from an ordinaryindependentclause. relativizationby deletion are the construcExamples of dependent-marked tions found in Japanese (27) and a number of other verb-finallanguages of Eurasia, such as Chechen (28):
(27) Kore wa [watakusi ga M0 kaita] Hhon desu. wrote book is SUBJ this TOP I
'This is a book that I have written.' (Kuno, 234)

Hk'ant a:rave:lira. della] (28) [M0 su:na a:xca I.DATmoney.NOMhaving.given boy.NOMwent.out
'The boy who gave me money went out.' In both these examples, the relative-clausecopy of the relativenoun is deleted; in Chechen, the verb therefore appearsin participialform. In both examples, the relative clause is immediatelyfollowed by the main-clausenoun, whose case is that requiredby its main-clausefunction. is relativizationby pronominalization representedby the Dependent-marked typical Europeanconstruction:
(29) The Hboy [Mwho gave me money] went out.
Head-markedrelativizationby deletion is shown in the following Navajo example (Platero 1974:10,with zero added; note Platero's argumentthat the zero is indeed in the main clause): Hnahal'in. (30) [tLeechjq'i maa'iitsoh bishxash-e] M0 .bitten-REL IMPF.3 .bark 3.PERF.3 wolf dog 'The dog that was bitten by the wolf is barking.' is relativizationby pronominalization representedby the followHead-marked
5 This section discusses only head-marking dependent-marking patternsin relativization, and vs. glosses over a numberof other propertiesof these examples. A fullertreatmentof relativization, strategieswith over-alllanguagetype, are given in Nichols 1984 and a correlationof relativization and (cf. Lehmann1984).This section and the followingone speak of relativization subordination as thoughthey appliedbetween clauses; but this is only a convenientway to describethe location of markers,not a claimaboutdependencyrelations.As is well known,a relativeclause (or at least deletion, i.e. not of the headlesstype) is syntactically a relativeclause not involvinghead-marked clause is a dependent dependentnot on the mainclause, but on the head noun;and a subordinate of the main verb, not of the main clause. This follows from the generalprinciplethat syntactic dependencyholds between words, not between constituents,which have no theoreticalstatus in dependencygrammar.
63
ing Arizona Tewa example (Gorbet 1977:272,citing work by P. Kroskrity):

(31) [he'i sen c'a:ndi n:bap'o mansu'-n] M'i Hdokumq.
that man yesterday wine 3>3.drink-DS 3sg. 1>3.bought 'I bought the wine which that man drankyesterday.'
2.6. OTHER SUBORDINATION.6 Dependent-marking patterns set off the sub-
ordinate clause as such. A typical device is the non-finalor non-finite verb used to markthe non-mainclause(s) of a chainingconstruction,as in Chechen. (Where the head consists of more than one word, as here, superscriptH is placed at both the beginningand the end.)
Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H Mdelca] (32) [musas su:na a:xca A.NOM out-went M.ERGme.DATmoney. NOM when.gave
'When Musa gave me money, Asian went out.' The Chechen construction is furtherdependent-marked reflexivizationor by deletion of a dependent-clauseactant under coreference to the main-clause subject:
(33) [musas Msiena a:xca Mdelca] Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H M. REFL.DAT 'When Musa gave him money, Asian went out.' Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H (34) M[M su:na a:xca a Mdella] me.DAT having.given A. PTC 'Having given me money, Aslan went out.' Deletion or reflexivization in the main clause is unacceptable: (35) *asla:n-a su:na a:xca a Mdella, M0 Ha:ra-ve:lira. A.-ERG me. DAT 'Aslan gave me money and went out.' In Navajo, head-marked and dependent-marked deletions may both occur (Platero, 228; zero added): M(a)go] 1eechqq'i M0 Hbishxash. (36) [Ashkii yah-i(yd3.PERF.3.bite into-pERF.3.walk- COMPdog boy (37) [M0 Yah-fiyd- M(a)go] Hashkii leechgq'i bishxash. bit into-walk- COMP boy dog 'When the boy walked in, the dog bit him'; '... he was bitten by the dog.' In both examples, the special form of the verb 'walk' marks the dependent clause as such. Deletion can take place either in the main clause, as in 36, or in the dependent clause, as in 37. Given the general predominance of headmarking patterns in Navajo, it is not surprising to find that 37 is less preferred,
and is subject to constraints that do not apply to 36. In contrast, Chechen

6 I use the term 'subordination' in a broad sense. Unless otherwise indicated, a subordinate clause is the one that bears a subordinate semantic relation (reason, condition, time etc.) to another, which is the main clause. Only for head-marked subordination with conjunctions, as in 38, does traditional analysis disagree with my analysis of which clause is subordinate; see the discussion there. I assume that 38 differs from 39 not in which clause is main and which subordinate, but only in where the subordination is marked.
64
is and chaingrammar stronglydependent-marking, only the dependent-marked ing constructionis possible. The IE subjunctiveis anotherverb form which marksa subordinateclause. Similarly, subordinatingconjunctions appear in subordinateclauses to mark them as such:
(38) MSince I overslept, HI was late.H
Head-marked clause intact, so that it is formally patternsleave the subordinate from an ordinaryindependentclause; but they markthe main indistinguishable clause as having a subordinate:
(39) 1 overslept,
M50so HI
was late.H
This is not really an example of subordination,and so is not a subordinating in conjunction, since subordination the traditionalsense is strictly dependentmarked.It is importantto note that 38-39 are identicalin their semanticsand represent polar opposites in the markingof the semantic relation; canonical subordination a consequence of the choice of dependent-marking is strategies. Another example of head-markedsubordination,from a generally headmarkinglanguage,7is from Makah(Jacobsen 1979:113):
(40) M'udu:X-s-isi Hp'usak ba:babu:pibitxsi.
because-INDIc. lsg.REsPoNsIvE tired I.overworked 'I'm tired because I overworked.' i.e. '[I'm tired because] I overworked.' Table 2 classifies a number of familiarmorphologicalcategories and processes as eitherhead-marked dependent-marked. mightbe said that verbal or It categories such as voice or overtly markedtransitivityare head-marked patterns of an indirect type: they carry informationabout the verb's valence, althoughthey do not directly mark the occurrence in the clause of particular nominalsfilling the valence. They might be said to convey informationabout the clause as a whole, ratherthan about its individualactants-and thus to be purely internalverbal markers,ratherthan markersof syntactic dependency. I leave the question open; such categories will not be discussed furtherhere.
Dependent-marking: case adnominalgenitive non-finiteverbs agreementin adjectives uninflectedadpositionswhich govern cases Head-marking: verbalagreementor cross-reference with nominalarguments incorporation directional(etc.) affixes on instrumental, verbs inflectedadpositions pronominal (possessive) affixes on nouns polysynthesis
TABLE2.
7 Jacobsenuses this exampleto makethe pointthat 'because'is the predicate the mainclause, of and would be better translated'the reason that ... is'. Whatis at issue here is not its status in its own clause, but which clause it is in.
65
2.7. NEUTRAL MARKING exemplified by certain NP's in Tagalog, where the is
first element in the phrasetakes a linkernal-ng whichidentifiesthe construction type. Since word order is free, either the head or the dependent may come first and hence acquirethe linker (Schachter& Otanes 1972:116ff., 123):
(41) nasa mesa-Mng Hlibro taleLI KE on table-LINKER book onH M nasa mesa (42) 'the book on the table'
HlibroM-ng
book-LINKER on
table
Although in 41 the linker happens to be attachedto the head, and in 42 to the dependent, its position is determinedonly by word order and is completely independent of syntactic relations. Hence these examples represent variants of a single construction type which is neutrallymarked. Many languages use clitics whose position is determinedby constituentboundariesand/orprosody, ratherthan by syntactic relations; such clitics also representneutralmarking. (Diachronically,however, they can often be regardedas former dependents which have floated away and are on their way to becominghead markers.This evolutionarytendency will be discussed in ?4.1.) A well-describedexample is the AUX many Uto-Aztecan languages. It usually combines a clitic pronoun of with modaland/ortense elements, and is generallyin sentence-secondposition, as in Luiseno (Steele 1979:447):
(43) noo-Mn-il xwaan-i H2ariquX. I-lsg.-TENSE John-oaj was.kicking
'I was kicking John.' The element n-il is the AUX. containsa pronominal It agreementmarkerwhich, since it is affixed to neitherthe independentsubjectpronounnoo nor the verb, representsneutralmarking.The following example, from Klamath,a Penutian languageof Oregon (Barker 1962:6-7), shows a second-positionclitic bundle consisting entirely of pronominalelements:
(44) mo: M?ans many 3pl.>lsg. ge: k'ot'as Hsiwga. these flea kill
'These fleas are killing me!'

2.8. OTHER MARKING PATTERNS. addition to head-marked and dependentIn
marked patterns, two further major possibilities exist. One is the complete absence of formal marking,on either head or dependent-a patternwhich is, of course, frequent in languages having little or no morphology.An example at the phrase level is found in English compoundslike grocery store, bus stop. The second pattern is the formal markingof both head and dependent, as in
Turkish; this will be called DOUBLE MARKING: (45) ev- in HkapiM-si 'the door of the house' house-GEN door-3 sg. 3. IMPLICATIONS TYPOLOGY. is not uncommon to see a language deFOR It scribed as havingmany cases, but little verbalinflection;or as using extensive verbal affixationratherthan case. Examples are Keenan's distinctionof nouncoding vs. verb-codinglanguages (1972b: 171-2), or Milewski's opposition of
66
'excentric' to 'concentric' (1967). That is, the literaturegenerally recognizes the complementaritybetween certain morphologicalcategories. What has not been recognized is that such complementaritiesneatly reduce to two polar possibilities-marking of heads vs. markingof dependents-and that a language is likely to make a consistent choice as to markingtype throughoutits morphosyntax.8This section shows how morphologicalmarkingpatterns can be used as typological parameters.
3.1. THERANGE TYPES.The typological conclusions offered in this section OF
are based on a core sample of 60 languages,shown in Table 3. The core sample comprises only languages having a considerable amount of morphology;the minimumfor inclusionin the core sampleis a total of four morphological markings of the types surveyed.9The sample is designed to cover as completely as possible the languages of North America and northernEurasia, with enough coverage of other areas (the Pacific, Australia,Africa, and South America)to rule out typological surprises. (A sample based exclusively on the northern hemisphere would, as it turns out, have covered all possibilities.) The core sample is restricted to a maximumof three languagesfrom any one family. Table 3 shows dependent-marked head-marked and patternsfor the following constituents: adpositional phrase (abbreviatedPP) with pronoun object (e.g. with me); PP with noun object (with a friend); NP with dependentpossessive
pronoun (my house); NP with dependent possessive noun (Father's house);
NP with attributive adjective (green house); and clause. Relativization and subordination not surveyed. At the clause level, I tabulatemarkingof three are core actants: subject, direct object, and indirectobject. The dependent-marked value for the clause is the total numberof distinct cases, particles, adpositions etc. which markthose three core relations;the head-marked value is the total numberof those three core relations that can be indexed on the verb.10Non8 Milewskisurveys both clause and phraselevels in a numberof languages,implicitlyassuming consistency between levels. The essence of his opposition'excentric'to 'concentric'involves not heads and dependents, but a matter which I treat as secondary in ?5.2, below. In Milewski's excentric type (which largely coincides with my dependent-marking type), verbs and arguments are constituentsof the clause, and all constituentsbear markersof their syntacticfunctionin the clause; in the concentrictype (which includesall of my head-marking languages),the verb is the the only clause constituent,and it determines(in its morphological marking) functionsof the other words in the sentence. 9 The limit of four was chosen so that Wichita,a languagewith four head-marking patternsand no dependent-marking patterns,would qualify. Wichitais a polysyntheticlanguagewhich strikes one as havinga great deal of morphology.Yet, with this limitof four, the Polynesianlanguageswith four dependent-marking patternsand no head-marking patterns-also qualify,althoughthese languagesdo not strike one as havinga great deal of morphology.Partof the differencein morphologicalcomplexity lies in the fact that Wichitamorphologyuses many types not includedin
Table 3: indexing of non-core actants on the verb, incorporation, etc. In addition, Wichita lacks
the PP constituent; hence it spreads its four morphological points over fewer constituentsthan does Polynesian,whichhas PP's. It wouldobviouslybe possibleto adjustthe qualifying parameters so that Wichitawould qualify and Polynesianwould not. This would considerablysimplifythe distribution word-orderpatterns,as will be discussed in ?3.4. of 10In additionto languagesthat lack adpositionsentirely,some languageshave functionalequivalents which belong to a form class other than the canonical adposition.In Squamish, 'relator verbs' (Kuipers 1967:153) functionallyequivalentto prepositions;but formallythey are a subare
67
core clause actants, and the valence patternsof derived causative verbs, were not surveyed. Most of the morphologicalmarkingssurveyed appearto be inflectional; however, for verbs that index three core actants, it is common for subject and direct object to be indexed inflectionally,while indirect object is indexed derivationally.1l As explained in the legend, the 'Totals' column reflects only primaryand salient patterns, i.e. those with entries D, H, (D), and (H). A total including minorpatterns was computed for pilot studies-but is not used here for comdescribe majorpatterns,but the parisons, for two reasons. First, all grammars extent to which minorpatternsare describedvaries fromgrammar grammar; to second, the decision as to whethera given minorpatternbelongs to synchronic morphology or to etymology can often be made only by a specialist. Hence total figures includingminor patterns might not be comparable.(It should be noted, however, that pilot studies based on totals including minor patterns producedtypological scales which were not substantiallydifferentfrom those based only on majorpatterns.) There are two totals: the 'full total', based on values for all constituents surveyed, and the 'shorttotal', based on clauses and possessive phrasesonly. The shorttotal was computedbecause manylanguages lack adpositions, and a numberlack adjectives; these facts complicate crosslinguistic comparisonbased on the full total.12 Figures 1 and 2 (page 70) plot the D values against the H values for each languagein the core sample-Fig. 1 for the full total, and Fig. 2 for the short
of type of verb, distinguished government an obliqueobject.InTable3 these havebeen classified by as adpositionson functionalgrounds.This classificationhas important implicationsfor the typothe logicalclassificationof Squamish: relatorsareclassifiedas prepositions, obliqueobjectcounts if as a dependent-marked pattern, but if they are classified as verbs, Squamishis entirely headmarking(only direct and indirectobjects are counted as core relationsin this survey). Wishram has a set of formswhichDyk (1933:142) calls 'postpositions'; they differfromcanonicaladpositions in being suffixed to their objects. The suffixationprecludesthe possibilityof any furthermarking on either 'postposition' or stem. These 'postpositions'should probablybe regardedas a set of cases; Wishramwould then fall into the largegroupof consistentlyhead-marking languageswhich exhibit oblique cases. The decision in this instance has no impact on the languagetype, since neitheranalysis yields any markingsto be counted. verbs which tl Most languagesof the North Caucasusform some of their tenses with auxiliary agree (in transitiveconstructions)with the agent-while the lexical verb, if it can take agreement, agrees with the patient. For these languages,I have counted only the simple tenses for Table 3, since they appearto be the unmarked the type. Counting analytictenses wouldincreasethe number of head-marking patternsby one point per language.For Basque, in contrast, only a handfulof verbs have synthetic inflection, and the open class conjugateswith auxiliariesin all tenses; here the entries in Table 3 are based on the inflectionof the auxiliary. 12 The maximum countof threeD andthreeH valuesat the clauselevel assumesthatalllanguages can have threecore valenceplaces. But a numberof languages,e.g. the MayanandSalishangroups, give evidence of having only two core valence places. Again we have a comparability problem: agreementwith two core actants in such a languageis agreementwith 100%of the core actants, while in anotherlanguageit is agreementwith only 67%of them. Table 3 and the quantification of types simply ignore this problem;a cross-linguisticsurvey of the notion of core argument, fundamental of thoughit is to a meaningful quantification morphological is marking-types, a topic for a separatepaper. Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language,appearsto permita maximum one of core argumentper clause; this fact complicatesassigningnumericalvalues so much that this language has not been includedin the sample.
68 PP CONSTITUENT:
DEPENDENT: PRONOUN LANGUAGE

PP
NOUN
NP
PRONOUN
NP
NOUN
NP
ADJECTIVE
CLAUSE
TOTALS FULL SHORT
TYPE FULL SHORT
Abkhaz Acoma Adyghe Aleut Amharic Arabic Barbareno Chumash Basque Batsbi Beja Blackfoot Burushaski Buryat ChechenIngush Chukchi Cochabamba Quechua Cree Diegueno Dyirbal Evenki Finnish Georgian German Greek (Homeric) Hawaiian Hebrew Imbabura Quechua Japanese Kalmyk Karok Ket Klamath Komi Lakhota Mangarayi Mongol Nanai Navajo Nera Nez Perce
H
[o]
H H H
H o D(H) D/H o D o D D o
-
H H H H H DIH D/H H D//HD D/H D/H H D D H

H
d D o H d D o o D D o o
I,d
0/3 0/2 2/3 311 3/2 2/3 0/3 3/3 311 2/2 0/3 2/2 3/1 3/(1) 3/2 2/2 0/3 212 3/0 3/1 3/1 3/3 3/1 3/1 2/0 2/3 3/1 3/0 3/1 0/2 2/2 2/0 3/1 0/2 3/1 3/0
0/7 0/4 4/6 5/6 6/3 6/6 0/5 7/3 8/1 413 0/5 6/2 7/2 8/1 8/5 4/4 0/5 214 6/0 4/5 8/2 8/3 8/1 8/1 4/0 6/5 5/1 6/0 7/2 0/6 3/6 7/0 6/3 0/4 6/2 7/0 3/5 0/7 5/2 5/2
0/5 0/4 3/5 4/3 5/3 4/5 0/4 5/3 511 3/3 0/5 4/2 5/2 5/1 514 4/4 015 2/4 5/0 3/3 5/2 5/3 5/1 5/1 4/0 4/5 5/1 5/0 5/2 0/4 2/4 4/0 5/3 0/4 5/2 5/0 3/3 0/5 4/2 4/2
-7 -4 -2
-5 -4 -2
-1
3 O -5 4 7 1 -5 4 5 7 3 O -5 -2
1
2 -1 -4 2 4 0 -5 2 3 4 1 O -5 -2
D D D D D D D ? -I [-] _ H D/(H) D D D o H [o] O D//h
H D D D
H
D D D D
o -I [-]
-
D/h D/h DII(H)D
D D D (D)/I (D)/I (D)/I

D/H H D/H H H
D
H D
H D/(H) D D D D D/H D D D//H H
o ? o
D
6
-1 6 5 7 7 4 1 4
5
0 3
d/H D D D D o D O O D H
H D D D D D D/H D D D
D D D D D o D O D o
2
4 4 4 -1 4
6
5
5
3
H
H D H
-
H
D D
-
-6
-3 7 3 -4 4 7 -2 -7 3 3
-4
-2 4 2 -4 3 5 0 -5 2 2
H (D) D D D o (D)/H D/H H H O D D D D/h H H D/h H H

d
D H H ? ?
D H H o
o o o
3/1*
0/3 3/2 2/2
D
D
D
D
TABLE 3.

CONSTITUENT: PP
DEPENDENT: PRONOUN LANGUAGE
69
TYPE
PP
NOUN
NP
PRONOUN
NP
NOUN
NP
ADJECTIVE
CLAUSE
TOTALS
FULL SHORT
FULL SHORT
Ngandi
D/(H) D
3/2
5/4
4/4
Nootka Patwin (Hill) Rotuman

Russian
h D/h o
D
H D o
D
H D D
D
H D D
D
o D d
D
0/1 2/0 2/0

3/1
0/4 7/0 4/0

8/1
0/3 4/0 3/0

5/1
-4 7 4
7
-3 4 3
4
H Sacapultec Samoan H Sahaptin(NW)? Shuswap [-] D Squamish Turkish D/(H) H Tzutujil

Uradhi Warndarang -
H D D o D D/(H) H
-
H D D//h H d/H D/H H

D h
H d D d D D H H d/H [o] D/H o H d

D H D D
0/2 2/0 3/2 1/2 1/2 3/1* 0/2

3/0 0/2
0/6 5/0 7/2 1/5 3/4 7/5 0/6

6/0 1/3
0/4 4/0 5/2 1/4 1/4 5/3 0/4

5/0 0/3
-6 5 5 -4 -1 2 -6
6 -2
-4 4 3 -3 -3 2 -4
5 -3
Wichita Wishram Wiyot

Yakut Yukulta
-I [-] o H
-I [ -] o D
-I//H d H [H] H H
H D
o o o
o D
0/3
0/3
0/4
0/5
0/4
0/5
-4
-5
-4
-5
0/3
2/1 3/2
0/5
4/5 6/2
0/5
2/3 5/2
-5
-1 4
-5
-1 3
(D)/(H)( D)/(H) H D
Yurak
3/2
5/4
4/3
TABLE3. (Continued) LEGEND:
H D H/D H//D o ? 0/3, 2/1 etc.
()
[] h, d I - I Total
Head-marking pattern Dependent-markiing pattern Double-marking pattern Two patterns:H or D No marking Construction type lackingin the language Information available not Number of head-marked of patterns/number dependent-marked patterns. For CLAUSE entry, a maximumof three places (subject, direct object, indirect object) were counted;dependent-marked patternswere countedfor nouns only. Accusative case counted, althoughused only for definitedirect objects. Salientpartialpattern;not knownwhetherthis patternis primary secondary, or markedor unmarked,etc. For PP:PRO and NP:PRO with H, the entry (D) means that the dependentis optionalbut, if present, is case-inflected. Inferredfrom generalizations grammars; examplesgiven. in no Minor(marked)patterns. of Incorporation dependentinto head. Patternabsent because of incorporation the constituentin questioninto the of verb. Sum of D and (D), H and (H), entries plus figuresfrom CLAUSE column.
70
876G)
54-
k
S~ >~~
*
0~~ 4- ~* 0t
*
0
>
3-
2-,
1
* * -*
11
_ I I-
:
5
0
0
H values
FIGURE 1.
5-
lk2.tt.
~~~~-----
4c)
-
3-
2.
* -
21-
-.
,k~
*
5
.9.
4
H values
FIGURE 2.
AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR HEAD-MARKING
71
total. It can be seen that the languagesin the core sample cluster in the upper left and lower right corners; i.e., languagescluster aroundthe extreme types. Between the two extremes are scattered languages of less polar types. The lower left corner is not really empty; languageswith little or no morphology, had they been surveyed, would appearthere. The upper right corner, in contrast, is really empty, or nearlyso. No languageuses all possible morphological markingson both heads and dependents of all the constituents surveyed, and few even approach this maximum.This must be a matter of economy: there is no need to mark everythingtwice. Figs. 1-2 also show that languages near the upper left corner-the dependent-markinglanguages-show more dispersion than the head-markinglanguages in the lower right area, which are more compactly distributed.This is because many otherwise dependent-marking languageshave verbalagreement with one or even two arguments,while few of the stronglyhead-marking lanshow any analogous preference for a particulardependent-marked guages pattern. Before proceeding with a quantificationof types, it may be helpful to give profiles of the various language types. There are two polar language types, and and head-marking dependent-marking, two non-polarlanguagetypes, douand split-marking. The polar types, which representthe majority ble-marking of languagessurveyed, are those which are most consistentin theiruse of headmorphologyacross constituents.All four types markingor dependent-marking are idealizedto some extent. The examples to follow come fromlanguagesthat most closely approachthe ideals. languageis one like Abkhaz (exx. 7-8, 14, and (a) A typical head-marking 24 above), which has a total of zero dependent-marking patterns and seven head-markingpatterns. It has no cases; it uses verbal agreementwith up to three core actants, possessive inflection of nouns, and adpositionswhich take possessive inflection in agreementwith their objects. The only possible headmarkingpattern which Abkhaz fails to exploit is the markingof head nouns for the presence of an adjective;neitherthe attributiveadjective nor the noun it modifies bears a markerof the attributiverelation. Another languagewith totals of D = 0 and H = 7 is Navajo. Here, in contrastto Abkhaz,relativization and subordinationare also head-marked(for relativization,see Nichols 1984, languagesin the sample Platero). Otherconsistently head-marking interpreting are Blackfoot, Barbareno Lakhota,Nootka, Sacapultec,ShusChumash,Cree, wap, Tzutujil,Wichita, Wishram,and Wiyot. languageis Chechen(exx. 6, 10, 18, 21, 28, (b) A typical dependent-marking and 32-35), which has totals of D = 8 and H = 1. Its sole head-marking feature is agreementof the verb with its intransitivesubject or transitiveobject; and this takes place in only a minorityof the verbs in the lexicon. Chechen uses cases, adnominalgenitives, agreeingadjectives, and uninflectedpostpositions which govern cases in their dependents; all these are dependent-marked patterns. Another example of the extreme dependent-marking type is Japanese, which differs from Chechen in having no verbal agreementwith the subject and no agreementof adjectives with nouns (as well as in using what are called languages particles ratherthan cases). Other consistently dependent-marking
72
in the sample are Batsbi, Dyirbal, German,Greek, Hawaiian,Klamath,Mongolian, Hill Patwin, Rotuman, Russian, Samoan, and Uradhi. (c) A double-marking languagemarks several of its constructionstwice, on both the head and the dependent.Huallaga(Huanuco)Quechua(examplesfrom David Weber, p.c.) shows such a pattern both in the possessive phrase (46) and the adpositionalphrase (47):
'John's house' (46) hwan-Mpa Hwasi-Mn John-GEN house-3 (47) hwan-Mpa Hhana-Mn-chaw 'above John' JOhn-GEN above-3-Loc
are as Languagesin the samplethatmay be characterized double-marking Aleut and Arabic. Many languages exhibit only one or a few double-markedconclauses but stituents;examples are Georgianand Basque, with double-marked strictly dependent-marked phrases. (d) Split-marking languages have some head-markedand some dependentmarkedpatterns.A clear example is the Bantufamily, where clauses are headmarked (with caseless nouns and verbal cross-reference), while phrases are (the dependent-marked dependentnoun copying the gender class of the head). The following examples from Tonga (Carter1963;John Kingston, p.c.) show this in the possessive phrase (48) and in the clause (49):
(48) irkuHboko f-Mku-d-mu-kaintu 15-arm DEF1-woman DEF15-ASSOC-
'the woman's arm' (Carter,25)

(49) (-kd-bwa Mka-ld-Mmu-Hlumd. DEF-12-dog 12- PRES-1-bite
'The puppy is biting her.' In 48, the dependent 'woman' carries the class 15 prefix of the head 'arm' (as well as its own class 1 prefix). In 49, the head 'bite' carries the prefixes of its subject ('dog' + diminutiveclass 12 = 'puppy')and object ('woman', class 1). Languages in the sample exhibitingsplits of various types include Adyghe, Finnish, Nanai, Squamish, Yurak, and Komi-in addition to Georgian and Basque, mentionedabove. While most languagesin the sample are predominantly either head-marking or dependent-marking, probablyno languageis exclusively of one or the other type. For instance, the Quichean branch of Mayan, despite overwhelmingly head-marking grammar,nonetheless marks the dependentin certain NP's. A monosyllabic preposed adjective takes a special suffix, as in Tzutujil (cf. Dayley):
(50) kaq-Ma Hjaay
red house Chechen and Ingush, Northeast Caucasianlanguages representativeof the polar dependent-marking type, exhibit one head-marking pattern in the affixation of locative preverbs(discussedbelow), anotherin genderagreementwith the S/O in some verbs, and still anotherin the fact that negationcan be marked only on the verb and never on the nominalin its scope (discussed below).
73
An analogous observationcan be made about the non-polardouble-marking lantype. Huanuco Quechua is one of the most consistently double-marking in guages; but in PP's with non-humannouns as objects, the object is NOT the 47 genitive case, and the constructionis thus head-marked double-marked (cf. above):
(51) wasi Hhana-Mn-chaw 'above the house'
house above-3-Loc Patterns such as these are among the minor types shown in Table 3.
3.2. QUANTIFICATIONTYPES.The over-all type of a language can be capOF
tured with the figures in its 'Totals' column from Table 3. Thus Dyirbal, with full totals D = 6 and H = 0, can be representedas 6/0; Yurakis 5/4; Navajo is 0/7. This classification is representedin Figs. 1-2. But it is frequentlyexpedient to express the array of types as a one-dimensionalcontinuumwith a small numberof possible positions. However, simply taking the ratio of D to H values does not yield a straightforward continuum;one reason is that all ratios with H = 0 requirethe mathematically impossibleoperationof division by zero. Another is that the amount of typological distance that is expressed as an integer at the dependent-marking of the scale (e.g. 7/1 = 7, 6/1 = end end 6, a difference of 1) is expressed as a tiny fractionat the head-marking of the scale (e.g. 1/7 = .14, 1/6 = .17, a differenceof .03). A less problematical way of producinga continuumis to reduce the two-dimensionalFigs. 1-2 to theirprojectionsonto a single line runningfromupperleft (extremedependentmarkingtype) to lower right (extreme head-marking type). This can be done by assigningpositive values to D scores and negative values to H scores: for
Dyirbal, +6, -0 = 6; for Yurak, +5, -4 = 1; and for Navajo, +0, -7
=
-7. This technique produces a scale of types expressed as integers. The full total yields 17 different types (8 to -8); the short total, 11 types (5 to -5). Henceforth I will call these continua the 'full scale' and the 'short scale', respectively. This techniqueis revealingonly as long as the sampleis confinedto languages having comparableamountsof morphology.If languageswith little or no morphology are admitted, we find that a languagewith a low numberalong one dimension and a zero along the other collapses into the same categoryas double-markingand split-markinglanguages, which are far from having zeroes along either dimension. For instance, a hypotheticallanguagewith a single D value and no H values (1/0) falls into the same type 1 as do Yurak (5/4) and Hebrew (6/5); a pure isolating language, at 0/0, belongs to the same type 0 as Arabic does at 6/6; English at 3/1 falls into type 2 with Turkish(5/3). Even by restrictingthe sample to languageshaving a total of at least four combined H and D values, we find that the Oceanic languagesHawaiianand Rotumanbut strictly dependent-marking, with only moderatemorphological complexity and double-marking (4/0)-fall into the same type 4 as split-marking Basque (7/3) and Mangarayi(6/2). Despite this problem, and despite the grossness of this metric, it will be used below to supportstatisticalgeneralizations. Figures 3 and 4 (overleaf) show the numberof languagesof each type in the
74
cn)
LX 0
D 10-
LL-
LU ?L 5z)
Z
0-
8 7 6 5
4 2J 2
1 0 -1
-2-3 -4 -5 -6
-7 -8
TYPE
FIGURE 3.
15C/)
LU
10-
LL
5Z
0.
' 5'4'3
Z 1 U -1-2-1-4-D
TYPE
FIGURE 4.
75
and sample. They show clusters of languagesin the dependent-marking headmarkingends of the scale, and a smaller cluster of split and double-marking clear languagesnear the center of the continuum.The clusteringis particularly in Fig. 4, based on the short scale.
3.3. SPLITTING HIERARCHIES. AND Split systems and split subsystems follow
regularprinciples, which lend themselves to statement as implicationalhierarchies. Two broadtypes of splittingprinciplescan be identified:those distinguishingdifferentkinds of constituents(?3.31), and those dealingwith the particular categories and relations indexed. Within the latter type, we can distinguishpreferredhead-marking patterns(?3.32)from preferreddependentmarkingpatterns (?3.33); the former pertain to particulargrammaticalcaterelations. gories, and the latter to particulargrammatical
3.31. SPLITS BETWEEN CONSTITUENTS. Table 4 ranks the constructions surFAVORED
MARKING Head
A
LEVEL clause
CONSTRUCTION governed argument subcategorized ungoverned inner adverbial outer adverbial possessive adpositional adjective + noun relative construction clause chaining TABLE4.
SUBTYPE
phrase
dependent dependent dependent dependent
pronoun noun pronoun noun
sentence
Dependent
The veyed here in orderof theirpropensityto be head-marked.13 relativeranking of clause and phrase is justified by splits such as that in Bantu languages and (discussed above), where clauses are head-marked phrasesare dependentmarked. It is also justified by the use of double-marking morphologyat the clause level, with dependent-marking morphology everywhere else, in languages like Basque, Batsbi, Burushaski,Georgian,and Mangarayi(as well as verbal agreement with one argumentin Indo-Europeanand other languages, and the partialverb agreementof Chechen-Ingush). Based on such languages, we can express the rankingof phrases and clauses in the form of two implicational statements: (52) If a languagehas major,salient, head-marking morphologyanywhere, it will have it at the clause level. (53) If a languagehas dependent-marking morphologyat the clause level, it will have it at the phrase level.
13 The distinction between government and subcategorization, indicated here under 'Construction', is discussed in ?5.21.
76
There are no exceptions to 52 in the sample. There is one departurefrom 53: Nanai, in which phrases are head-marked,but clauses are mostly dependentmarked. Two potential departuresare Ket and Evenki. Ket uses subject and its object cases, but is otherwise almost entirely head-marking: sole phrasal dependent-marked patternis partialagreementof adjectives with head nouns. Evenki is much like Nanai, except that its adjectives agree. Ket and Evenki thus support53; but this is poor support,in that agreementof adjectives with head nouns is cross-linguisticallynot well correlated with over-all language type. (It is interestingthat all three of these languagesare spoken in Siberia.) Tadzhikand Persian,languagesnot in the core sample, also have head-marked clauses. Principle53 is well supported phrases, but mostly dependent-marked in the core sample-somewhat triviallyby the consistentlydependent-marking and lanlanguages,and interestinglyby fourteendouble-marking split-marking guages. It is thus a statisticalgeneralizationof considerablestrength. The relative rankingof phrases and sentences is supportedby the fact that relativization some languagesuse head-marked phrases,but dependent-marked and subordination; exampleis Abkhaz(for relativization,see Nichols 1984). an Within phrases, NP's with modifying adjectives are least prone to be headmarked. The only instance of head-markedtreatmentof such phrases is the constructionof Tadzhikand Persian(ex. 3, above) and of Shuswap(19). Headmarkedtreatmentof these phrases seems to occur only in languagesthat are at generallyhead-marking the phraselevel (e.g. TadzhikandPersian-Shuswap is head-marking all levels); but it is extremely rare even in such languages. at It is likely that attributivephrases will prove to disfavor head-marking even more than subordinateclauses, and it is clear that they are to be rankedlower thanrelativeconstructions-in that head-marked relativization,thoughnot frequent, is found in a numberof languagesand is systematicallycorrelatedwith over-all morphologicalmarkingtype, while head-markedattributivephrases are extremelyrareandnot well correlatedwith over-alllanguagetype. Rankings for relative and chained clauses are indicatedon Table 4; however, pendinga systematic survey of subordination, they are somewhattentative.(Therankings were determined by an informal survey of several Northeast Caucasian languages.) All constituenttypes show a cross-linguisticpropensityto favor head-marking of pronounobjects, relative to noun objects. This differentialtreatmentis systematic in NP's and PP's in the Uralic and Semitic families. The following illustrateHungarianadpositionalphrases:
(54) a. Pronoun object: b. Noun object:
Hmellett-Mem 'beside me'
beside-1sg. [head-marked] a haz Hmellett 'beside the house' the house beside [neutralmarking]
The following illustrateYurak possessive phrases:
77
(55) a. Pronoun possessor:
b. Noun possessor:
man' HxarduM-v 'my house' I.NOMhouse-lsg. [head-marked] (Terescenko 1973:221) 'the shore of the river' jaxaM-h Hvar
river-GEN shore Ldependent-marked] (Decsy 1966:71) The same distinctionis manifestedat the clause level, thoughit is not reflected in Table 3. In Arabic, objects may be markedon the verb with pronominal clitics only if the pronominalclitic is the sole occurrenceof the object in the clause (i.e., the pronominalclitic cannot cross-referencean independentNP). A numberof languagesexhibit a contrastbetween alienableand inalienable possession, with the latter favoring head-marking.Alienable vs. inalienable possession is determinedby the possessed (i.e. head) noun. Althoughthe exact membershipof the inalienableclass varies from languageto language, it typically includes body parts and kin terms; it is a minor, marked class. For instance, in Burushaski, a set of kin terms takes head-marked possession, but
possession is otherwise dependent-marked.

3.32. PREFERRED HEAD-MARKING PATTERNS. Three patterns favor head-
marking;they are better described in terms of the grammatical categories indexed than in terms of the syntactic relations marked.They are as follows: (a) Person, number,and/orgender agreementon heads is common, even in otherwise dependent-marking languages. An example is the partialagreement of verbs with the covert gender class of the S/O in Ingush (v, j, and d mark gender classes):
(56) k'ant c'a v- oay.
boy(v) home v-comes 'The boy comes home.'

jwof c'aj-oay.
girl(j) 'The girl comes home.'

be:r c'a d-oay.
child(d) 'The child comes home.'

All instances of verbal agreement found among core-sample languages, as well as all instances of possessive inflection on nouns and adpositions, are for categories of person, number, and/or gender. The sample contains occasional examples of possessive inflection which mark only the possessive RELATION as
such, and do not index features of the dependent;but it contains no examples of these patterns indexing categories other than gender, number,or person. (b) Quantifiers,delimiters,negationetc. tend to be head-marked, associated with the head of the constituentratherthan with the dependentin their scope. It is well known that such elements tend to float away from their nominals;
78
what is importanthere is that they float towardthe verb. The result is a clauselevel head-marked (etc.) pattern:the verb carriesmarkersof the quantification of its dependent nominals. Some English examples:
(57) MNot Mall sizes and colors Hare available. [no floating] (58) MA// sizes and colors Hare Mnot available. [negation floated] (59) These sizes and colors Hare Mnot Mall available. [negation and quan-
tification floated] In many languages, negation can be only on the verb, regardlessof its scope; this is true of Chechen and Ingush, otherwise stronglydependent-marking languages. Sometimes negationis renderedonly with special verb paradigms,and there is no independentword for 'not'; such is the case in Avar, an otherwise dependent-marking language of the Northeast Caucasus. These phenomena differ from those discussed thus far in that they are markersof semantic, not syntactic, relations; but it is strikingthat their patterningand diachronicbehavior (cf. ?4.1) can be subsumedunder the generalizationsoffered here. (c) The third preferredhead-marking pattern is the semanticallybased hierarchy of adverbials, discussed in ?3.33(a)below.
3.33. PREFERRED DEPENDENT-MARKING PATTERNS. Unlike the preferred head-
markingpatterns, these are better stated in terms of the relationmarkedthan in terms of grammaticalcategories indexed: (a) Predominantlyhead-markinglanguages may exhibit case inventories. Sometimes there are only oblique cases, with no formaldistinctionof subject vs. object, as in several non-Pama-Nyungan languagesof Australia(cf. Dixon is 1980:223-4;Warndarang an example from the core sample). Sometimes (as in Adyghe) there is a minimaltwo-case oppositionof direct vs. oblique which distinguishes subjects and objects; Shuswap has such a two-case opposition, but both subjects and objects take the direct case. Such languages provide evidence for an implicationalstatement: if cases exist, at least one may be described as oblique;its functions may or may not includethe markingof core relations, but must include the markingof non-core relations. This hierarchy is also found in the next pattern. (b) Adjuncts and the like are usually dependent-marked, means of cases by or adpositions.The oblique-onlycase systems of the Australian languagesmentioned in (a) serve exactly this function. Bantu nouns in core relations are caseless, while adverbialsare overtly markedin some way. Cross-linguistically, the following general hierarchyseems to determinethe propensityof nominals to triggerverbal marking:
(60) MOST LIKELY LEAST LIKELY
Governed
>
Subcategorized
>
Inner
>
Outer
adverbials adverbials That is, verbs agree with subjects and/orobjects before they agree with goals; and so on.14 Withinthis hierarchy,adjunctscan be rankedon a purelysemantic
14 An interesting piece of evidence for the ordering of inner and outer adverbials in this hierarchy is discussed by Hyman & Duranti 1982: in some Bantu languages, an indexed nominal having an
79
basis for their propensity to be markedon the verb: those of location or direction, and of instrumentor manner,are most often indexedon verbs. IE preverbs are locative, directional, and manner markers;in a number of North American families (Uto-Aztecan, Yuman, Pomoan, Siouan, Algonkian, Caddoan), instrumental,locative, and directionalaffixes on verbs are grammaticalized. Adverbial notions like reason, condition, purpose, concession, time etc. seem not to be markedon verbs.
3.4. WORDORDER.Table 5 shows languages ranked by the short scale and
dominantword orders for their NP and clause constituents(those tabulatedin the short scale).15Tables 6a-b show the frequenciesof clause-levelword-order types among the morphologicaltypes.'6 The followingconclusions aboutword orderandmorphological marking type can be drawn (a multinomialchi-squaretest showed that the patterningsare very unlikely to result from chance): (a) SOV languages are frequent in all types: as pointed out by Greenberg 1963, this is the most common word order. SOV languagesare especially predominantamong the double-marking and split-marking languages (types 2 to - 2), where Arabicand Hebrew are the only samplelanguagesto exhibit other orders. (b) VO languages of all types (SVO, VSO, VOS) are more common in the negative range of the scale than in the positive. Three of those in the positive range come from Oceanic languages, which (as mentionedabove) in other respects patternatypically,because of theirrelativelysimplemorphology;if they were removed from the sample on those grounds, VO languages would predominate even more stronglyin the negative range, i.e. amonglanguageswith tendencies. head-marking
innermeaningchanges to the outer meaningwhen an applicativesuffix is addedto the verb. This shows thatouteradverbialsrequirea specialvoice-likemarker the verbif they areto be indexed on on the verb-and hence that, in such a language,they are to be rankedbelow innerlocatives. 15 The standard abbreviation (g) referring possessor (Greenberg G to 1963,Hawkins1983),has only a mnemonicconnectionwith 'genitive'-since, in head-marked possessive constructions,the possessor is uninflectedand hence not in a genitive case. 16 Since some of the expected values at the bottom of this table are less than 5, which may decrease the validity of the chi-squaretest, I performednine back-uptests, collapsingthe three word-ordercategories into two; this procedureyielded higher numbers. For each of the three languagetypes, at least one such test was significantat P = .05, and at least one other was close to significant.The collapsingsthat yielded significanceat .05 or betterwere:
LANGUAGE TYPE CATEGORIES COMPARED SIGNIFICANCE
Verb-medial other* vs. P < .05 Verb-finalvs. other P < .025 P < .005 fVerb-initialvs. other* to -5) (-3 Head-marking P c .05 lVerb-finalvs. other The asteriskedcollapsingsstill left one expectedvalueless than5 (in bothinstances,4). The second asteriskedone is undoubtedlysafe, in view of its high significancelevel; the first may not be. In their relative significancelevels and the distribution uncertaintiesas asterisked,these crossof tests furthersupportthe conclusionsdrawnfrom Table 6.
Dependent-marking to 3) (5 Double and split (2 to -2)
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TYPE LANGUAGE

NP ORDER CLAUSE ORDER VO
VERB-INITIAL
Dyirbal Japanese Mongol Uradhi Batsbi Chechen-Ingush German Greek (Homeric) Hawaiian Imbabura Quechua Klamath Patwin(Hill) Russian Samoan
Buryat Finnish Kalmyk Mangarayi Rotuman Sahaptin (NW) Yukulta Amharic Basque Burushaski Georgian Komi Nera Nez Perce Turkish Aleut Beja Chukchi Yurak Cochabamba Quechua Evenki Nanai Arabic Hebrew Yakut Adyghe Diegueno Ket Nootka Shuswap Squamish Wamdarang
[SOV] GN GN GN GN GN NG,gn GN/NG GN//NG GN GN GN NG,gn NG GN GN [GN] NG,gn GN//NG [GN] GN,ng GN GN GN GN [GN] [GN] GN [GN] [GN] GN GN GN GN GN [NG] NG GN GN GN GN NG [NG/GN] [NG] [NG,gn]
sov
SOV
sov sov sov

SVO,sov SOV,svo x x x x x x x
VSO sov
SVO//SOV
sov svo v...

SOV SVO,sov SOV OVS, others SVO VSO SVO,sov SOV SOV SOV SOV SOV,svo SOV,ovs VSO [SOV] [SOV] SOV SVO,sov SOV SOV SOV SOV [VSO] SVO SOV SOV SOV SOV VSO V ... VSO SVO
x x
-1
[x] x
[x]
-2
-3
x
x
x x x
TABLE5. Morphological marking type and word-order type (based on short scale).

TYPE LANGUAGE NP ORDER CLAUSE ORDER VO
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VERB-INITIAL
- 4
Acoma Barbareno Chumash Karok Lakhota Sacapultec Tzutujil Wichita Abkhaz Blackfoot Cree Navajo Wishram Wiyot
-5
GN GN/NG [GN] GN NG NG [GN] GN GN GN GN [GN]
SOV,svo
V... [SVO/SOV] SOV
x (x) x x
vos vos
OVS,sov
x x
SOV
svo
V ... SOV
x x
[X]
x [x]
[VSO]
[sov/Svo]
TABLE 5. (Continued)
(x)
LEGEND:
G,g
Possessor Possessed (head)noun NG, SOV etc. Majororder Minor or restrictedorder (includingorder for constituentwith pronominal ng, sov etc. dependents,if differentfrom order with nominaldependents) Verb-initial order V... Orderbasedon inferencefromgrammatical or descriptions on my text surveys [x] entries are based on explicit statementsin grammars) (unbracketed One of two equally prevalentpatterns (x) Both ordersequallyfrequentor basic NG/GN etc. NG//GN etc. Differentsources give differentorders
N, n
(c) Verb-initiallanguagesare found in the positive range, but most of them occur in the negative range. Although this is not a frequent type crosslinguistically, it makes up over half of the distinctly head-marking languages (types -3 to -5). lan(d) Verb-mediallanguages are commonest among dependent-marking guages (types 5 to 3), althoughthe inclusionof Oceaniclanguagesin the sample may have influencedthis distribution,as discussed above. Anotherreason for the clusteringof verb-mediallanguageshere is the combinedaction of principles just discussed: if verb-finalorder is favored by types 2 to - 2 (and hence disfavored by types 5 to 3), and if verb-initialorder is favored only by headmarkinglanguages, then a default preferencefor verb-medialorder by dependent-marking languagesis to be expected. The main conclusion to be drawnfrom these facts is that head-marking morphology favors verb-initialorder, while dependent-marking morphology disfavors it. This appearsto have a functionalmotivation:if the verb comes first in a head-marking relations(which are marked language,then the grammatical on the verb) are establishedat the outset; if the nouns come first in a language
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TYPE

V ... SVO SOV TOTAL
(short scale)
5 to3 3 5.5 10.5 19
2 to -2 -3to -5
TOTALS
LEGEND:
2 8
2 3
16 5
20 16
55
10.5 31.5 13 TABLE6a. Observed frequencies.
V ... Verb-initial (VSO, VOS)
Note: The three languageswith SOV/SVOor SOV//SVOorderwere each countedas one-halfan entry in both SVO and SOV categories.
P = about .05 for types 2 to -2 and -3 to -5, and for V ... order
P = about .10 for SOV order Othertypes (5 to 3, SVO): not significant

TOTAL
TYPE
V ...
SVO
SOV
(observed)
5 to 3 2 to -2 -3 to -5
4 5 4
4 4 3
11 11 9
19 20 16
55 31 11 13 TOTALS type had no influenceon wordorderandvice versa). (if 6b. Expected distribution marking TABLE
Legend as for Table 6a.
having at least some dependent-markedmorphology, then the grammatical relations (which are markedon the nouns) are established at the outset. Esrelationsat the beginningmust be communicativelyeftablishinggrammatical ficacious, in that it streamlinesthe hearer'sprocessing. Table 7 suggests that the functional principledoes not extend to NP's. In the great majorityof languagesin the sample, possessives precede their heads, fromthe results is type. The distribution indistinguishable regardlessof marking of chance.
DEPENDENT ORDER MARKING DOUBLE HEAD
GN NG GN/NG
21 6 0
6 2 0
14 5 2
8 21 27 TOTAL and marking TABLE7. Ordering type in possessive phrases.
Not significant(P = 1.0 for NG, .9 for others).
However, other evidence indicates that the functionalprincipleis valid for NP's as well. Two languagegroups show examples in which a departurefrom fromthe dominant type is accompaniedby a departure the dominantword-order type. The clearestexamplecomes fromthe Mayanfamily, where morphological the sole dependent-marked patternof Tzutujilis a particlefound on preposed attributive adjectives (see ex. 50 above). Other languages of the Quichean
83
branch, which includes Tzutujil, have the same particle;Day (1973:48)mentions a functionallyanalogousbut phonologicallydissimilarparticlein Jacaltec, which belongs to another branch. Recall that the Mayan family is uniformly its head-marking; word orderis head-firstat both clause andphraselevels (VSO or VOS; noun + adjective, possessed noun + possessor, preposition + object). The preposed attributiveconstructionis atypical, both in its dependentfirst word order and in its dependent-marked morphology. Tadzhikand Persian(neitherof which is in the core sample)present a somewhen they are head-first what less clear example. Their NP's are head-marked (the typical word order); clauses are sparsely double-marked a postposi(by tional particlewhich marksobjects, and by one-place agreementon the verb); and they have SOV order. The clause continues the inheritedIE word order is and markingtype, althoughthe postpositionalnoun-marker secondary (the IE noun cases having been lost), and only two clause dependents can be distinguished by the postposition. NP's have changed both the inheritedword and order (free or perhapsdependent-first) the inheritedmarkingtype (IE lanphrases). Speakingin broaddiachronic guages ordinarilyhave no head-marked terms, a departurefrom the typical NP order is correlatedwith a departure from the typical NP markingtype.17 In both Mayan and Iranian,then, an atypicalword order is associated with a morphologicalmarkingtype which is atypicalof the languagefamily. In both families, the generalfunctionalprincipleof markingthe first element in a constituentis upheldby the simultaneousswitchingof both wordorderand marking type. To judge from these two examples, it may be that the functionalprinciple acts to facilitate word-orderchange. I thereforesuggest the following hypothesis: The functionalprincipleof markingthe first element in a constituentwill be upheld most consistently in areas where word-orderchange is attested, inferable,or on-going. This hypothesis predictsthat evidence for the operation of the principleat the phrase level will be found in precisely the contexts just described for Mayan and Iranian. Note that, in both these language groups, the association of markedword order and markedmorphologicaltype amountsto an instance of iconicity. But this iconicity has no historical, explanatory power; it misses the important synchronicfunctionalexplanation.To invoke iconicity would not account for or explain observed facts, but would merely label one type of configuration displayed by the facts. This section presents (a) a 4. IMPLICATIONS HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS. FOR principleconcerning mechanismsof change, and (b) a principleof interest to
an The changes in phrase-levelword order transformed inconsistentordertypical of IE languages into a consistent, if split, order:modernTadzhikand Persianare head-firstat the phrase level (they have prepositionsand mostly preposedmodifiers),but head-last(SOV) at the clause level. The markingpatternscan also be describedas split, but not so neatly:phrasesare predomin inantlyhead-marked, that NP's exhibitthe particlediscussed above, althoughPP's are without in clauses are more nearlydependent-marked, that the verb agrees with one actant, and marking; up to two can be distinguishedby postpositionalparticles.
17
84
reconstructionandto the establishmentof genetic connections.The latter,since it is based on demonstrablyconservativeareas of grammar, may offer historical at linguistics a tool we so far lack: a criterionfor NoN-relatedness any recoverable time depth (and the principlemay extend the recoverabletime depth beyond that availablenow to standardcomparison).In ?4.4, I present some facts aboutgeographicaldistribution types thatmay have significancefor the study of of prehistoricmovements of languagesand peoples.
4.1. MIGRATION AFFIXES OF may be classified into the types described below. 4.11. HEADWARD MIGRATION. any adposition or piece of affixal morIf
phology moves, it will go from the dependentto the head of the constituent, not vice versa. An example is the attachmentof the English infinitivalmarker to onto the main verb, producingwanna, gonna, oughta etc. Another is the development of the split infinitive in English, where infinitival to separates fromthe infinitiveand migratesto the head word, bypassingpreposedmodifiers
of the infinitive, as in I hope to really understand your paper this time. Another
is the frequent change of nominal adpositions to verbal affixes. This process is describedfor IE preverbsby Kurylowicz(1964, Ch. 7) and Ivanov (1965:219
ff.) The same process is visible today in Chechen:
(61) 'Put some sugar in your tea.'

a. caj-na MCu s<iekar Htasa. tea-DATin sugar. NOM sprinkle. IMPER b. caj-na siekar Mcu-Htasa. tea-DATsugar.NOM in-sprinkle.IMPER Here the postposition cu governs the dative (as postpositions regularly do in
Chechen). In 61b, it is a preverb, and its former object has now become a second object of the verb (in the dative, as are most second objects). Both constructionsare possible in all possible word orders.In closely relatedIngush, the pattern of 61b is apparentlypreferred;it is often lexicalized (and hence obligatory).In the isolated Jordandialect and in more distantlyrelatedBatsbi, the patternof 61a is preferred.Based on this distribution (andon the etymology and inflectionalclass of this word), we can reconstructonly the postpositional functionof 61a for the proto-language; is thus innovative,and the migration 61b has indeed been from dependentnoun to head verb. This example is a particularly strong demonstrationof the universalityof headwardmigration,since Chechen and Ingushare amongthe world's most consistentlydependent-marking languages. An analogous example comes from Abkhaz, a consistently head-marking language(Hewitt, 114): (62) 'I hit him with a/the hammer.'
/ a-la} sd-yd-Hsd-yt. M{-la the-hammer with it-with I-him-hit-FINITE b. a-zahta s- a + la-y-sa yt. the-hammer I-it + with-him-hit-FINITE
a. a-zah0a
In 62a, the meaning 'with' is conveyed by a suffix or adpositionon the noun
85
'hammer';in 62b there is no mark on the noun, and 'with' is markedon the verb. Ex. 62b is the neutralvariant,preferredexcept in specific circumstances. Sapir (1915:548-9) gives an explicit diachronic interpretationof the same development in Athabaskan.Hupa xa 'after' functions both as a verbal prefix and as a nominalpostposition:18 'look for it!' (63) 0-Mxa-n-Hthe: it-after-you-search
(64)
no-Mxa:
'[following] after us'
us-after is Sapir's interpretation that removalof the postposition-marked object causes the postposition to become a verbal prefix. My interpretation differs from his only in claimingthat we do not need to posit the removalof the object in order to justify the shift of the postpositionto a verbalprefix: as in Chechen-Ingush, Indo-European,and Abkhaz, the postpositioncould have migratedto the verb while its object was present. It is importantto make clear that such instances of migrationare not simply linear resegmentations,and not simply changes in boundarytypes. Although adjacencyof the constituents may be among the conditionsfavoringmigration (as it appears to be for some Chechen speakers), it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for migration(and all possible word-ordervariants of 61a-b can be elicited). Migrationis motivated by, and statable in terms of, syntactic relations and morphologicalcategories, not linear order. Evidence that adjacency is not requiredcomes from the floating of quantifiersand delimiters in English, where the floated wordjumps over interveningwords:
(65) I work at home only in the evening. (66) I only work at home in the evening.
Another good example is the Abkhaz pair above (62a-b), where the instrumental element jumps over a verbal prefix when it migrates. Clear evidence that syntactic relations constrain migrationcomes from the development of bound pronominal forms in the languagesof Australia(Dixon 1980:362 That ff.) some of the Australianlanguageshave only subject clitics, while others have both subject and object clitics (363, 368), shows that syntactic relations condition cliticizationand/or migration. If linear order were the primaryconditioningfactor for migration-i.e., if migrationwere just a shift in boundarytypes-then we would expect that affix order would regularlyfollow word order, or reflect earlierword order. That it does not mechanicallydo so has been argued by Langdon 1977 and Comrie (1981:209ff.) What is now needed is a positive understanding the mechanics of and motivation of the processes which turn words into affixes. One principle has been given here: dependents (or parts of them) become affixes on heads. A complete account of the causationmustalso establishhierarchiesof syntactic relations, pronominalcategories, semanticfunctions,lexical classes etc. which
Vowels have been rephonemicized interlinears and addedin these examples, with help from Victor Golla.
18
86
favor migration.Such work will requireclose knowledgeof etymology for the languages concerned.
FROM THEDEPENDENT. AWAY Sometimes the marker of a 4.12. MIGRATION
syntacticrelationleaves the dependent,but does not attachto the head;instead, it assumes a position determinedby clause boundariesand/or stress. An exampleis the Englishsplit subjectinfinitive,as in To reallyansweryour question
would take a lot more time, where to has broken away from answer and is
clause-initial.Another example may be archaicEnglishpostverbalquantifiers,

as in They seem both very obstinate (Jespersen 1961:595), where both has broken away from they. (In modern They both seem very obstinate or We have
all come, the quantifierhas migratedto the head; Shakespeare'sboth they and Swift's both which, cited by Poutsma 1916:1063, preserve the early orderwith can no floating.)Such examples show that headwardmigration be brokendown to into two steps: migrationaway from the dependent,and migration the head. All migrating affixes undergo the first step; some (apparently most) also undergo the second step. It is importantto emphasize that movement in the opposite direction-away from the head and toward the dependent-seems never to occur.
4.13. REDUCTION. Migration can account only for movement of affixal mor-
elements. It does not account for another phemes and other grammaticalized majorsource of affixes: the reductionof whole wordsto affixes via cliticization. Such reduced elements have the same two repositioningpossibilities as migratingaffixes. Sometimes they change from dependentsto markerson heads, as when pronominalcliticization in the Romance languages changes subjects and objects into clitics on verbs. (This is not the same thing as headwardmigration, because the entire dependent-not just its marker-gravitates to the head.) Sometimes, ratherthanbecomingmarkerson heads, clitics become free atonic elements whose position is determinednot by syntactic relations (and hence not by headedness) but by prosody and clause boundaries.An example is provided by the second-positionclitics of South and West Slavic,19e.g., in Serbo-Croatian:
(67) Jovan mu gaje dao juce.
gave yesterday to.him it TNS 'Jovan gave it to him yesterday.' The clitics mu, ga, andje are no longerdependents;but neitherare they markers on heads. Anothersource of affixes is the reductionof heads themselves, wherebythey become markers on dependents. A common example is the change of postpositions into case suffixes-a process endemic amongthe languagesof northern Eurasia (Oinas 1961 discusses some Uralic examples). Another is the evolution of auxiliary verbs into affixes on the main verb, attested in many J.
19 The clitic elements of these languages also include some non-pronominal elements, e.g. former auxiliary verbs which have become tense markers. Thus the clitic string includes exactly the categories we expect to find marked on verbs: indexing of some actant properties and tense/aspect categories.
87
families. Another is the boundary shift visible in etymologically transparent

subordinating conjunctions, e.g. Russian potomu cto 'because', derived from po 'by, because of, according to' + tomu 'that' (dative, the case governed by po) + the subordinating conjunctioncto 'that'. The boundaryshift is: (68) [NP VP po tomu [cto S]] '... because of the fact that S' (69) [NP VP [po tomu cto S]] '... because S' In 68, we have a clause subordinated with cto and dependent on po tomu
'because of the fact' in the main clause. In 69, the left boundaryof the subordinate clause has moved, so that po tomu is now in the subordinate clause,
and has become part of an etymologicallycomplex subordinating conjunction.

4.14. IMPLICATIONS LINGUISTIC FOR DIACHRONY. reduction of words to The
affixes via cliticization is analogous to headwardmigrationof affixes, in that it involves a progression from dependent to head: the cliticized dependent becomes a markeron a head. The reductionof clitics to free atonic elements (e.g. second-position clitics) may well be a transitionalstage to the reduction of words to affixes. (Sometimesthe clitic stringitself develops into an auxiliary, which is the new clause head. This process is characteristicof Uto-Aztecan; see Steele.) The reduction of heads to markers on their former dependents, however, reverses the principleof headwardmigration.Hence it shows that grammatical restructuringbecause of cliticization of words is subject to fewer constraints than is migrationof elements alreadybelow the word level: the latter, but not the former, is restrictedto headwardmovement. Reductionof heads is the only process, among those surveyed here, that arguablyresults from morphemeboundaryshifts. This suggests thatreversalof the headward-migration principle can occur only because of boundaryshifts, which in turnsuggests that it would be fruitful to seek constraints on such changes in the form of restrictions to certainconstituentor boundarytypes. One obvious hypothesisis thatboundary shifts will be commonest at the levels which, as shown in ?3.3, inherentlyfavor dependent-marking. The principleof headwardmigrationis of obvious relevance to the study of mechanisms of change: it reduces instances of morphologicalmigrationto a single principle, and states a constrainton possible changes. It is also of relevance to historical linguistics: it gives us some constraintson reconstruction and a potentialcriterionfor cognacy. It entailsthatpieces of verbalmorphology may go back etymologically to elements of nominalmorphology,but not vice versa.20It also means that, if a piece of verbal morphologyin one languageis
Let us assumethat the head-to-dependent found in the reductionof postpositions progression to case suffixes, andof auxiliary verbsto verbalaffixes, is restrictedto certainkindsof constituents. Then it may well be that verbs never directlybecome elements of nominalmorphology(although they may do so indirectly,by first turninginto adpositionsand then into case affixes). If this is correct, we can restatethe principlein a muchmoregeneralform(although,to be of use, it requires etymologicalknowledgefor the languagebeing investigated): pieces of verbalmorphologymay go back etymologicallyto nouns, pronouns,or partsof either, but never vice versa-unless therehas been an intermediate change in part of speech.
20
88
clearlycognate to a piece of nominalmorphologyin another,we will reconstruct the nominal function for the proto-language-in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary.Note that this principle,like the extension of the first one suggested in fn. 20, requiresfairly specialized knowledge of etymology.
4.2. EVOLUTION. The principle of headward migration entails that head-
marked patterns will have more possible historical sources than dependent-markedones. New dependent-marking patterns can arise only through patboundary shifting. As shown in ?4.1, this means that dependent-marking terns can arise only throughclisis of previouslyindependentwords. Of course, pre-existentdependent-marking morphologymay spreadbecause of analogical extension; but there seem to be no other sources of entirely new dependentmarkingmorphology. Head-marking patterns,in contrast,have manypossible sources-e.g., headward migrationof morphemes; clisis of independentwords, such as subject and object pronominals; fusion of clitics into an auxiliarythat heads the clause; and boundary shifting, as when auxiliariesbecome affixes of the main verbs that formerly depended on them. (Most examples of the latter type involve purely verb-internalinflection for tense/aspect categories, and are not of interest here; but in at least some instances-e.g. affixation of auxiliariesin a numberof North Caucasianlanguages-the auxiliaryimposes its valence, and hence its agreementpattern, on the whole clause.) There is another sense in which head-markingpatterns have more sources than do dependent-marking patterns: since any constituent has only one head, but potentially has more than one dependent, a head receiving affixes throughmigrationor clisis can receive them from more than one source. These observations have implicationsfor the evolution of linguistic types. They suggest that head-markinglanguages have many possible typological sources, which seems to be true: they may arise as isolatinglanguagesbecome and pronounsare cliticized to verbs (as has apparentlyoccurred agglutinating, in some branches of Otomanguean);or they may develop from dependentmarkinglanguages,throughmigrationand clisis (as OregonPenutianmay have developed from a CaliforniaPenutian model; see Silverstein 1979). Polysynthetic languagescan develop fromlanguagesof a more moderatehead-marking systype as additionalelements migrateto the verb. Split and double-marking tems can give rise to polar head-marking systems througherosion or migration of the dependent-marking affixes. Dependent-marking languages, in contrast, evolve only through extensive use of boundaryshifting-particularly within NP's, so that the adpositionbecomes an affix on its former dependent. Such boundaryshiftingis greatly favored by consistent, polarword-ordertypes, where heads consistentlyprecede dependents or vice versa. This is because if, at the NP level, the adposition (head) and any modifiers(dependents)are on opposite sides of the noun, there is little obstacle to boundaryreduction, and to interpretation the adposition of as an affix or clitic. But if the word orderis inconsistent-so that the sequence
-+of elements in a PP is PREPOSITIONMODIFIER NOUN,or NOUN+ MODIFIER +
89
the + POSTPOSITION-then use of PP's with modifiersblocks analysis of word boundariesas morphemeboundaries. An example of increased dependent-marking through boundary shifting is found in the Uralic family, whose western membersgraduallychangetheirtype from double-markingto dependent-marking-partly by restricting or losing possessive affilxes,and partlyby addingto the inheritedcase inventorythrough accretion of postpositions (see Oinas for examples of the latter process). Accretion of postpositions is favored by the rigid modifier-headorder of Uralic. The evolutionary patterns provide one more methodologicalprinciple for historical linguistics: in the event that we have two clearly related languages and with clearly cognate morphology,one of them stronglyhead-marking one strongly dependent-marking,we should reconstruct the dependent-marking type. (For non-cognatemorphology,of course, this principledoes not apply.)
OF 4.3. STABILITY TYPES.Morphological marking type is a conservative, stable feature in languages-as shown by the absence of radical changes within
known genetic units, and by the remarkableconsistency in markingtype exhibited by families of great time depth and wide geographicalspread. The Mayan, Athabaskan, Wakashan, Salishan, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonkian families are consistently head-marking;CaliforniaPenutian, Northeast Caucasian, Indo-European, and Dravidian are consistently dependent-marking. Indo-Europeanhas retained its basic type-dependent-marked with subject inflection on verbs, short type 4 and full type 7 for languagespreservingthe inheritedmorphology-for some 6,000 years, with only a recent trend toward head-markedclauses in the pronominalclisis of the Romance languages (a
process which occurs only after most of the morphology has been lost). The
phrases is Bantu split pattern of head-markedclauses and dependent-marked consistent throughoutthe family. Some of these families have undergoneconsiderablechangein othertypologicalfeatures, such as wordorder;this indicates that patterns of morphological marking are more stable than word-order patterns. That these patternsreflect a generaltruthcan be shown statistically.For this
SAMPLE, shown demonstration, I use a second sample of languages, the GENETIC
in Table 8 (overleaf). This sample contains 86 languages, chosen for different purposes than the core sampleof 60 languages.The genetic sampleis intended to be representativeof known and probablegenetic groupings,and at the same time to be representativeof the numericaltypes establishedon the basis of the core sample. It comprises 15 families, with memberlanguageschosen so as to cover the major genetic branches within families, to include a minimumof three languagesper family (for the core sample, three languagesper family is the maximum),and to cover any known typological or geographicaldiversity within families.2' (Availabilityof grammatical descriptionssometimesrestricts these ideals.) The genetic sampleincludes 28 languagesof the dependent-mark21 Typological diversity was deliberately sought out, since it is damaging to the hypothesis that genetic groups show relatively little internal diversity.
90

SHORT TYPE
MEAN
STANDARD
DEVIATION
FULL TYPE
MEAN
STANDARD
DEVIATION
Afro-Asiatic Semitic: Amharic Arabic Hebrew Ge'ez Nilo-Saharan: Nera Cushitic: Beja Omotic: Dizi Algic Algonkian: Blackfoot Cree Ritwan: Wiyot Yurok Altaic Mongolian: Buryat Kalmyk Mongol Turkic: Nogai Turkish Tuva Yakut Tungusic: Evenki Nanai Athabaskan Chasta Costa Hupa Navajo Mattole Australian Pama-Nyungan: Dyirbal Uradhi Yukulta Non-Pama-Nyungan: Mangarayi Warndarang Ngandi Gunwinggu
.3 0
2 -1 -1 0 2 0 0 -4.8 -5 -5 -5 -4
1.3 1.4
3
.85
1.6
0
0 1 -1 3 0 0
1.7
0.5 -5 -5 -5 -6
-5.3
0.5
1.8 3.7
3 3 5
1.9 1.2
5 5 7
2.1 5.7
3.1 1.2
1.2
2 2 2 -1
1.5
2 2 2 -1 -l
1.3
1.5
0
-4.3 -4 -4 -5 -4 1.0 4.3 5 3.1 1.2 .5
-2
-6.3 -6 -7 -6 5.3 6 1.2 .6
5
3 .3 3 -3 0 2.4
6 4
4 * 1
TABLE8. Typological diff'erentiation within language families and comparison groups (based on short and full type numbers) * Full totals not shown for languages lacking adpositions. ** Wakashan 1 based o n analysis of Kwakwala in Boas 1947; Wakashan 2 based on analysis of Kwakwala in Levine 1977
AND DEPENDENT-MARKING HEAD-MARKING GRAMMAR

SHORT
TYPE
91
STANDARD
DEVIATION
MEAN
STANDARD
DEVIATION
FULL
TYPE
MEAN
Maung Malak-Malak
-2
-1
-3 3 -1.6 -4
0
Tiwi
Djingili Hokan Washo Shasta Karok Barbareno Diegueho Eastern Porno Indo-European English French (coll.) German Greek Latin Russian Mayan Jacaltec Sacapultec Tzutujil Yucatec NE Caucasian Nakh: Chechen-Ingush Batsbi Daghestanian: Kubachi Tabassaran Karati NW Caucasian Abkhaz Adyghe Ubykh Oceanic Polynesian: Hawaiian Samoan Futuna-Aniwa North Hebridean: Rotuman Nguna Penutian California: Maidu S.Sierra Miwok Patwin Yawelmani Oregon: Klamath
3.2 -6 -6 -5
*
-2.6
4.9
-4 -4 -2 4 3.0 1 4 4 4 4 -4 -4 -4 4 4 3.3 3 4 4 -4.0

-5
4 1.6 2 7 7 7 7 -4.0 0
-5
5.3
2.6
-5.8 -6 -6 -6
.5
? 6.4 7 7 .9
3.6
.5
.6 6
5
6.0
1.0
7 1.7 -7 -2 -7 3.2 3.7 .8 .6 4

5
-5.3
2.9
-2
-5
3.8 4.0
1.1 0
4 4 3 3 2 2.3 3.5 4 1 4 5 1.0 4

4 4 2 3.2 1.7 5 2 7 8 4.1 7 ? ? 4.0 5.6 4.1 2.6
2.5
5.3
92

SHORT TYPE
MEAN
STANDARD
DEVIATION
FULL TYPE
MEAN
STANDARD
DEVIATION
Nez Perce NW Sahaptin Wishram Salishan Bella Coola Coast: Squamish Halkomelem Tillamook Tsamosan: Upper Chehalis Interior: Shuswap Coeur d'Alene Uralic Finno-Ugric: Cheremis Finnish Komi Samoyed: Yurak Wakashan 1** 2** Nootkan: Nootka Makah Kwakiutlan: Kwakwala 1** Kwakwala 2**
2 3 -5
3 5 -5
-3.6
-4 -3.3 -3 -2 -5 -4 -3 -4 2.0 2.3 2 3 2
1
1.0
1.5
-3.2
1.6
-1
-2
-5 -4 -4 .8 .6
2.8 3.3
2.4 2.5
1
6 3
-3.7 -2.7 -3 -4 -4
.6 1.5 -4 -5 -6 -2 3.8 -7 -2 -7 5 7 7 6 5 7 2.9 6 4 4
-5.0 -3.7
1.0 1.5
-1
Two non-genetic groupings, for comparison: Caucasus: -5 Abkhaz -2 Adyghe -5 Ubykh 2 Georgian 4 Chechen-Ingush 4 Batsbi 3 Kubachi 3 Tabassaran 4 Karati North Eurasian isolates: 5 Japanese 2 Basque 2 Burushaski
6.0
4.7
and ing type (types 5 to 3), 29 of the double-marking split types (2 to -2), and 29 of the head-marking type (-3 to -5) on the short scale; for the full scale, the figures are 26 (types 8 to 4), 25 (types 3 to -3), and 23 (types -4 to -8). (Thetotal for the full scale is only 74, because full types could not be determined
93
for all languages.) The genetic sample includes some families within larger groups (e.g. Semitic within Afro-Asiatic), and some groups whose genetic affiliation is supportedby some specialists but not proven (Afro-Asiatic,Altaic, Table 8 shows standarddeviations of the type Hokan, Penutian,Australian).22 numbers within each group.23(Standarddeviations were not computed for subgroupscontainingfewer than three members.)24 Table 9 (overleaf) shows the rank order of the standarddeviations of the type values. The range is from 0 to 4.1 on the short scale, with a median of 1.3 and a mean of 1.7; and from 0 to 4.6 on the full scale, with a medianof 1.7 and a mean of 2.0. (The range is greaterfor the full scale, and the mean and median higher, because it spans 17 types, while the short scale comprises only 11.) Table 9 also shows the range, mean, and median of 20 randomizationsof the genetic samplefor the short scale, and 10 randomizations the full scale. for deviationsamonggenetic groupFor both scales, the meanandmedianstandard ings are much lower than those for randomsamples. The median for random samples in both instances coincides with the over-all standarddeviationwithin the core sample. Both means and medians for the random samples are at or near the extreme upper range of the genetic groupings.The mean and median values differ very little among the randomizations:the medians on the short scale rangefrom 3.15 to 3.65, and the means from 2.9 to 3.4. A chi-squaretest showed that the differencebetween the medianvalues of the genetic and random groupingsis highly significantat a level much better than 0.0001. Furtherevidence supportingthe hypothesis of stabilitywithingenetic groups
22 Dixon (1980:225) confidentof the genetic unity of all the non-Pama-Nyungan for that is (and matterall Australian)languagesexcept for Tiwi and Djingili(includedin Table 8), which seem to lack the essentialAustralian cognatebase. If these two languagesare excludedfromthe non-PamaNyungansample, the standarddeviationbecomes negligiblysmaller(2.2); the rangeis unaffected. It is interestingthat these languagesare typologicallyquite dissimilar,and their types represent the extremes (short types 3 and -3) to be found withinnon-Pama-Nyungan. 23 For computing standard deviations,type numberswere convertedto positiveintegers(ranging from 0 to 10 for the short scale, 0 to 16 for the full scale). 24 Under Wakashan, note that Kwakwalacan be describedin two ways, dependingon whether the analysisis done before or aftercliticizationapplies.If the analysisfollows cliticization,surface strings are characterizedby 'the subordination the noun underthe verb by means of particles of which coalesce phoneticallywith the precedingword, while they determinethe function of the followingword' (Boas 1947:206). This meansthatnounslose theirrelation-marking particles;hence clause relationsare not dependent-marked, the verb (normallysentence-initial) carrythe and can particle markersof two noun relations. On this analysis, the clause is mostly head-marked, and the languagebelongs to short type -4. If the analysis is done on uncliticizedstrings, then the relation-marking particlesaccompanytheir nouns; the verb takes only one agreementmarker,the clause is mostly dependent-marked, the languageis of short type - 1. This analysis is used and by Levine. These two valuesfor Kwakwala-and hence for Wakashan-are includedin the sample because the differencebetween the two analyses was the greatest such varianceencounteredfor any languagein eitherthe core sampleor the genetic sample;the differencebetweenthe two entries thus serves as a sort of plausibilitycheck on the entire procedure.Even if all genetic groupings showed standarddeviationsof .9 higherthan their actual values (corresponding the difference to betweenWakashan1 and Wakashan producedby including valuesfor Kwakwala),the mean 2, two and medianvalues for geneticgroupingswould still be significantly lowerthanthose of randomized groupings.
94

SHORT SCALE
GENETIC GROUPINGS
NON-GENETIC
GROUPINGS
o *Chumashan
Mayan
0.5 ALGIC
0.6
0.8 1.0 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.9 2.4
2.9 3.1 3.2 3.4 3.7 4.1 5.8
Athabaskan *NE Caucasian *Daghestanian *Polynesian *Finno-Ugric Wakashan1 Uralic Oceanic Salishan *Mongolian *Pama-Nyungan AFRO-ASIATIC *Semitic *Turikic *Coast Salish Wakashan2 Indo-European NW Caucasian *California Penutian ALTAIC *Non-Pama-Nyungan North Eurasianisolates
AUSTRALIAN HOKAN PENUTIAN
Medianfor genetic sample Mean for genetic sample
Mean for randomsamples Medianfor randomsamples;over-all for core sample

Caucasus
*Oregon Penutian
Highest value amongrandomsamples
TABLE 9. Standard deviationin type, in rank order families (phylaetc.); the asteriskmarksfamiliesincludedin Capitalsindicate higher-order largergroups also listed here.
comes from the orderingof the non-random entrieson Table9. The non-genetic groupingsof North Eurasianisolates andlanguagesof the Caucasushave values in the vicinity of the highest values for genetic groups; on the full scale, both non-geneticgroups have higher standarddeviationsthan any genetic group. Of the six groups whose genetic status is still unsettled-Penutian, Oregon Penutian, Australian, non-Pama-Nyungan(Australian),Altaic, and Hokan-all have highervalues thanany othergroup;andthe fourmost controversialgroups (OregonPenutian,Penutian,Hokan, and Australian)have values substantially and higherthan those of any other groups. (Australian hence non-Pama-Nyun-

FULL SCALE NON-GENETIC GROUPINGS
95
GENETIC GROUPINGS
0 0.5 0.6 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.9 3.1 4.1 4.4 4.6 4.7 4.9 5.3 6.0 7.5
*Chumashan ALGIC Mayan Athabaskan NE Caucasian Wakashan 1 *Daghestanian Oceanic *Pama-Nyungan *Mongolian Wakashan *Turkic AFROASIATIC Salishan *Semitic Uralic *Finno-Ugric Indo-European *California Penutian NW Caucasian Quechuan ALTAIC PENUTIAN
Lowest value among random samples
Median for genetic groups
Mean for genetic groups
Median for random samples Mean for random samples Overall for core sample North Eurasian isolates
HOKAN *Oregon Penutian Caucasus Highest value among random samples TABLE9. (Continued)
gan are not included on the full scale because they lack adpositions, and their full totals could not be calculated.) Comparing standard deviations of types is an extremely gross index of relatedness. What is shared by demonstrably related languages is not numbers, but particular configurations of the D and H values shown in Table 3. Thus the Bantu family is remarkably consistent in showing head-marked clauses and dependent-marked phrases; the Uralic family is remarkably consistent in its pattern of head-marked phrases with pronoun dependents, and dependentmarked phrases with noun dependents; and the languages of Australia share certain agreement patterns which have the effect of unifying their types, as will be discussed below. The figures in Tables 8-9 should not be taken to mean
96
that shared type numbers prove genetic connection; they merely show that over-all types are conservative and stable, in that non-geneticgroups diverge more in type than do genetic groups. Instances of documentedor inferablesubstantialchange within families are found only in families of considerable time depth. The changes involved are almost never radical, and are based on the diachronicprinciplesestablishedin ?4.1. Some families have no variationat all in type; several have a range of only two or three points on the type continuum.Afro-Asiaticis a particularly compelling example, with a range of only four (short scale) or five (full scale) points despite its great age (over 8,000 years). Indo-Europeanhas a range of seven points on the full scale-a discrepancyachieved by losing most of the morphology (as in English), and then by increasinghead-markedpatterns at the clause level throughcliticizationof pronominalsubjects and objects (as in colloquial French and in Spanish). Anotherfamily with a wide rangeis Uralic: here types 1 and 2 of the more eastern and northernlanguages(the Samoyed branch, represented in the sample by Yurak, and the Permianbranch, represented by Komi) are conservative: Finnish and other western languageshave achieved a strongly dependent-marked type (6 for Finnish) by losing object agreement markersand possessive affixes (which were word-finaland hence susceptible to erosion).25 its Altaic has a rangecomparableto that of Uralic or Indo-European; genetic unity is widely (but not universally)accepted. Of the Altaic groups, Turkicand Tungusichave cases, possessive affixes (used on nouns and postpositions),and but verbal agreement with the subject. The over-all effect is double-marking, Turkishincreases the dependent-marking patternsby using possessive affixes more and the genitive case less. The Mongolianfamily makes little or no use of possessive affixes, and some of the languagesalso lack verbal agreement; hence these languages are strongly dependent-marking. Since the possessive affixes of Turkic and Tungusic are clearly cognate to independentpronouns, the rise of the double-marking type in these groups can be attributedto cliticization of pronouns.26
In Turkicand in some of Uralic(underTurkicinfluence),nominalpossessive suffixesprecede case suffixes. In Proto-Uralic,the opposite order was used: possessive suffixes were word-final.
(The history of the Uralic change is described in Nichols 1973, and independently in Comrie 1980.)
25
Word-final positionwould seem the most appropriate an agreementmarker.The Turkicorder, for and the innovative order in Uralic, suggest that the possessive markerfunctions as a semantic componentof the noun, ratherthanas an agreementmarker.In otherwords, it is treatedas having with the noun, insteadof beingputon the nounby an agreement marking relation rule the originated to the dependentnominal.It has thus acquiredthe status of somethingother thana strictlyheadmarking affix. This means that Turkic and Turkic-influenced Uralic languages are not actually as strongly head-marking as the numbers would indicate. 26 Possessive suffixes precede case suffixes in Turkic, but follow them in Tungusic; this suggests
that cliticizationof pronounstook place at differenttimes, or developedby differentmeans in the two families. It also shows that Turkicmorphologycannot be derivedstraightforwardly from cliticizationonto a Mongolian-type base, in that Mongoliancannotdetachits case suffixes and insert clitics before them (see againfn. 25).
97
Another group whose genetic status is in doubt is Australian,whose range is nine points on the short scale. All the Pama-Nyungan languagesuse cases, and are strongly dependent-marked.Some of them cliticize pronouns to the verb and thus exhibit double-markedclauses; e.g. Western Desert (Dixon 1980:362):
(70) Hpu-ngku-Mrna-Mnta.
hit-FUT- lsg. SUBJ-2sg.OBJ
'I will hit you.' Phrases in the Pama-Nyunganlanguages are dependent-marked. The nonPama-Nyunganlanguages all use verbal cross-reference;some of them have possessive affixes for inalienablepossession, and some lack core cases. However, none achieves a consistently head-marking character-partly because of the use of cases in some languages,and partlybecause of the use of agreement (in gender class, number,and/orcase) of modifiers,both attributivesand possessors, with head nouns. This use of phrase-levelagreementthroughoutAustralia is thus a strong contributorto typologicaluniformity:except for phrasal agreement, some of the double-marking non-Pama-Nyungan languages might be radicallyhead-marking. of (Implementation phrase-leveldependent-marking in the form of gender agreementgives the non-Pama-Nyungan languages an over-all type similarto that of the Bantulanguages-as Capell 1965points out, using differentterms.) All the internaldiversities discussed so far involve shiftingbetween a polar and a non-polartype, or simplyaccentuationof one or the othermarking pattern within a general type. Radical changes from one polar type to another are representedby only two examples; in both of them, the genetic status is problematical. (Wereit not for the moderating influenceof NP-level agreement,the Australianlanguagesjust discussed would be a third example.) The first exampleis the Hokanfamily, withinwhich the dependent-marking Pomoangroup is sharply divergent from its double-marking and head-marking kin; but the genetic unity of Hokan is debated(Langdon1979, 1982finds supportfor genetic unity). The second group is Penutian. The Oregon Penutiangroups have become head-marking and double-markingthrough transparently secondary clisis, notably of pronominalelements, onto the verb (Silverstein 1979), thus divergingradicallyfromthe stronglydependent-marking of California type Penutian; but Penutianis another group whose genetic status is far from certain. The Penutianand Oregon Penutiangroups show extremely high standarddeviations on Table 9. These figures result from the inclusion of Wishram, a completely head-marking language, as a representativeof the coastal Oregon languages(Coos-Alsea-Siuslaw;Takelma-Kalapuya; Chinookan,including and Wishram)whose connection to Penutian is controversial(as is their internal connection). If Australian, Hokan, and Penutianare indeed families, then they evidently represent the time depth and areal disparityat which the conservative nature of morphologicalmarking-typeceases to be visible, and work on their prehistories can give us informationon the rate and mechanismsof change in type.
98
Areal distributionfurthertestifies to the stability and conservatismof morphological markingtype. At least one linguistic area is markedby intensive convergence, but a radical opposition of types: this is the North Caucasus, where phonologicalconvergence, massive lexical borrowing,and sharedgrammaticalfeatures (such as ergativityand word-ordertype), plus near-identityof Northwest Caumaterialculture and folklore, unite the stronglyhead-marking casian and stronglydependent-marking NortheastandNorth CentralCaucasian types within marking groups. Table 9 shows that the diversityof morphological the Caucasus is greaterthan that within any other non-random groupingon the full scale-second only to Oregon Penutianon the short scale, and above the mean and median for randomsamples on both scales. There are several linguistic areas where morphologicalmarkingtype is also shared: Meso-America and the Pacific Northwest are head-marking,while India and Europe are dependent-marking. Areal influence on markingtype is furtherdemonstratedby the fact that almost all the changes in type mentioned above, and both the candidates for radical changes, involve accommodation to areal patterns. The western Uralic languagesassimilate to the neighboring European type, while eastern Uralic languages remain double-markinglike their Siberian neighbors;the Hokan subgroupPomoan assimilates to the dependent-marking type of adjacent CaliforniaPenutianand of Yukian (a small isolate family); the Oregon Penutian language Wishramconverges with the polysyntheticNorthwest Coast type representedby the SalishanandWakashan families. Such examples show that morphologicalmarkingtype figures as implicans in statements about propensity to yield to areal influence:if the markingtype converges, then phonological, lexical, syntactic, and cultural sharings also occur; but the converse is not true, as shown by the crucial example of the Caucasus. The obvious interpretationof this implicationalrelation is that the arealinfluence requiredto produce sharedtypes must be both intense and longterm. The resistanceof morphological marking type to changehas four implications for historical linguistics. First, markingtype may be useful as a negative criterion for relatedness. Since it is stable in languagefamilies as old as Uralic, Indo-European,and Afro-Asiatic-whose time depthis at or nearthe maximum accessible to the comparativemethod-we are probablyjustified in assuming that languages of radically different types are either absolutely unrelated, or else not relatedat least up to a time depth significantly greaterthanthatafforded by standardcomparativeprocedures.Hokan and Penutian-which exhibit radical internaldifferences in morphologicalmarkingtype, give some evidence of relatedness, yet defy firm genetic classification based on standardcriteriasuggest that languageswhose markingtypes are polar opposites, though they may actually stem froma single ancestor, cannotbe provenrelatedby currently available methods. Second, it may be that morphologicalmarkingtype can also provide us with a negative criterionfor deciding areal questions and questions of migration.It is likely thata sharpdiscontinuityin type bespeaksa relativelyrecentmigration,
99
and that the divergenttypes have been adjacentfor less time thanwas required for the typological differentiationof Hokan or Penutian.We need not assume a uniform rate of change in order to use this criterion as a rule of thumb. Supportingevidence comes from Whistler 1977, who argues that the (dependent-marking)California Penutian languages are intrusive into California, where the indigenouslanguageswere mostly Hokan (and hence head-marking and double-marking).This criterion suggests that the typological rift in the North Caucasusresultsfrom intrusionof one of the two groupsinto the otheralthough, of course, it alone cannot tell us which group was indigenous and which intrusive. Third, even where morphologicalmarkingtype may be of use as a positive criterion-e.g., injudgingthe intensityand/ortime depth of arealinteractionit has no value unless we have independentevidence for typological change. For instance, the consistently head-marked characterof those Athabaskanlanguages spoken on the Pacific coast cannotbe taken as evidence for the duration or intensity of Athabaskanparticipation the head-marking in Pacific Northwest convergence area, since the entire Athabaskanfamily is consistently headmarking(and most members are distant from the coast). Fourth, morphologicalmarkingtype in itself can never be invoked as a positive criterionfor genetic relatedness. It cannot, for instance,justify seeking a on the Proto-Japanese/Penutian/Northeast-Caucasian/Pama-Nyungan strength of shareddependent-marking tendencies, or a Proto-Northwest-Caucasian/Athon abaskan/Mayan the strengthof sharedhead-marking tendencies. However, underthe rightcombinationof circumstances-geographical plausibility,areal considerations, and (most importantly)specific types and positions of affixation-typological similarity can be used profitablyas a heuristic. Thus, Silverstein's refinement (1979) of Sapir's classification (1929) identifies ancient Penutianas a predominantly dependent-marking languagewith verbal suffixes of certain types; the means by which the proto-language may have increased its head-markingtendencies are the universals of change discussed in ?4.1. Establishingthat OregonPenutiancan plausiblybe tracedback to a dependentmarkingbase does not in itself establish its genetic unity with CaliforniaPenutian;but it tells the comparativistwhere to look for possible correspondences, and it removes a majorobstacle-typological discrepancy-to positinggenetic unity. A similarexample involves the two Australian groups:the mostly dependentmarkingPama-Nyunganlanguages, and the double-marking non-Pama-Nyungan languages. The differences between the groups center on cliticization of pronouns, with the consequent rise of head-marking verbal morphology,loss of core cases, and expansion of the head-marked treatmentof inalienablepossession. These differences involve universal changes: migrationof clitics to heads, loss of morphologicalmarkers,and expansion of pre-existentpatterns to more lexical items. They are also incrementalor even gradual,in that they can be thought of as isoglosses in the form of head-markingtendencies emanating from the innovating northeast (the non-Pama-Nyunganarea) and spreadingthroughthe conservative southwest (the Pama-Nyunganarea). The
100
deep-seated typological affinitiesbetween the two groups supportthe findings of recent etymological scrutiny (Dixon 1980:382ff.) This support does not amountto the use of marking type as a positive criterionfor relatedness;rather, as with Penutian, the typological argumenthas the effect of removing an apparent typologicaldiscrepancy,and hence a majorobstacle to positing genetic unity. Again we see that the typological argumentis meaningfulonly when combined with etymologicalresearch of the type that requiresa specialist.
The DISTRIBUTION. facts presented in this section pertain 4.4. GEOGRAPHICAL
of to both historyand typology. Table 10(overleaf)shows the distribution types Dependent(based on the short scale) by continentor similarlarge-scalearea.27 markinglanguages are found in all areas. Most areas have a range of types covering about half the scale. Only Europe, America, and (to a lesser extent) Australiainclude both extremes.28In Eurasia (and especially in Europe), dependent-markedpatterns predominate.In America, and especially in North America, head-marking languagesare commonest.29Only in America, indeed, In are the head-marking types predominant.30 continentalAsia, head-marked patternsbecome more frequent(and type numbersbecome lower) as we move either north or east, i.e. as we approachNorth America. The only exceptions to this generalizationare Ket, spoken in the Ural Mountains-i.e. at the western borderof Asia and hence maximallyfar from North America, yet predominantly head-marking-and Chukchi,spoken in Kamchatka,adjacentto North patterns. America, yet exhibitingmany dependent-marked It is interestingthat, in Eurasia,the large, widespreadfamiliesare dependentdistributedlanguages marking;but the isolates, smallfamilies, andperipherally tendencies, and hence type numbersnear or in the have more head-marking languages,a group negative partof the range. These includethe Paleo-Siberian of isolates and small families: Ket (type -3 on the full scale), Chukchiand its clauses and a great deal of incorporelatives (languageswith double-marked ration into heads), Yukagir(which has very little morphology, rather evenly split between head-marked and dependent-markedpatterns), and Gilyak (largely isolating, though some sandhi follows a head-markedpattern). Other Eurasian isolates include Basque and Burushaski,both having verbal agreement with more than one actant. By contrast, in North Americait is the headmarkinglanguagesthat make up the large, widespreadfamilies, while the degroups are found in peripheraland refuge areas. pendent-marking In the history of Uralic, we can see evidence for the spreadof the dominant patternsand extension of dependentEurasiantype. The loss of head-marking
27 I put the boundary between Europe and Asia at the Ural Mountains (and a line extending southward from them). The part of the Near East included with Africa is that portion lying south of northernmost Africa. 28 Since the Bantu languages cover most of Africa, the type entry for that family dominates the continent. The Khoisan languages appear to be dependent-marking, while West African groups are nearly isolating. 29 The coverage of South America in this survey is particularly cursory, which leaves open the possibility that head-marking languages may be equally frequent there. 30 The head-marking type is also frequent, at least on the clause level, in Papua New Guinea (William Foley, p.c.)
101
markedones in western Uralic languagesresults from the influence of the IE languagesto the west. It indicates that Uralic came into this typologicalsphere tendenof influence as a languagewith much more pronouncedhead-marking cies, and fewer dependent-marked patterns.Proto-Uralicwould then have had affinitieswith the Paleo-Siberianand Eskimo-Aleutlanguagesto the northand east. The type change within Uralic suggests that the peripherallocation of head-markedand double-marked patternsin Eurasiaresults not from displacement of languagesor peoples by dependent-marking languagesor their speakers, but from the spread of broad areal tendencies-in the form of isoglosses which spread from a southern and western center, but did not extend all the way to the periphery.A similarspreadof isoglosses in Australiawas suggested in ?4.3 above. So 4.5. CONCLUSIONS.far, typology has had ratherless to contributeto historical linguistics than might be wished. None of the presently availabletypological criteriacan safely be invoked in an argumentfor genetic relatednessor non-relatedness,or for formercontacts. This is because none of them has been designed with the goal of pinpointingdiagnosticallyconservative features of In languages.31 contrast, the distinction of morphologicalmarkingpatterns is a typological parameterchosen specifically because of its apparentstability, and its consequent potentialcontributionsto historicallinguistics.This section has shown how it can be used in argumentsaboutgenetic relatednessand areal contacts.
THEORY. Thereare severalrespects in which FOR 5. IMPLICATIONS LINGUISTIC This patterns appear to be favored and universallypreferred.32 head-marking section presents some concrete evidence for this status, some abstract properties which present further evidence for it, and some implicationsof these which facts for theory. Some of the evidence comes fromclause-levelgrammar, patterns,relativeto otherlevels (as shown in ?3) inherentlyfavors head-marked of grammar.I argue that head-markedpatterns are favored there, not only relative to other levels, but also absolutely; and that the same absolute preference is also shown at other levels of grammar.
31 The status of today's typology vis-a-vis historical linguistics is reviewed in Comrie 1981, Ch. 10. It is risky to use typology as an argument for genetic affiliation, or to use it in assessing the likelihood that a reconstruction is correct; it is unwise to assume immutability of types, to expect typological consistency of proto-languages, or to infer proto-word-order from morpheme order. The only positive contribution is the hope that the study of typology and universals may aid reconstruction, and explain developments in daughter languages, by providing a universal account of mechanisms of change. In other words, typology has almost nothing to contribute to reconstruction and the study of genetic connections, although it may one day have something to contribute to the study of mechanisms of change. The present paper argues, however, that typology has great potential for historical linguistics, particularly if historical linguistics has some say in the choice of typological parameters. 32 Throughout ?5, the terms 'favored' and 'preferred' are used in place of 'unmarked' to avoid the stylistic infelicity of 'the head-marked type is unmarked' etc. Only in ?5.11, ?5.23, and the final paragraph was it necessary to use 'unmarked', 'marked', and 'markedness'.
EUROPE TYPE
ASIA
AFRICA, NEAR EAST
PACIFIC
AUSTRALIA
5 4 ChechenIngush German Greek Russian *Karati Batsbi Finnish *Kubachi *Tabassaran Georgian Basque Turkish *Komi Nogai
Japanese Mongol Hawaiian Rotuman Samoan
Dyirbal Uradhi
Buryat Chukchi Kalmyk Burushaski Yurak *Tuva Amharic Nera
*FutunaAniwa
Mangarayi Yukulta *Djingili
*Nguna
Aleut Yurak Evenki Nanai Yakut Adyghe Ket
*Gunwinggu Beja Ge'ez **Bantut Arabic Hebrew Ngandi
-1 -2
*MalakMalak *Maung
-3
*Warndarang Tiwi
-4
-5
Abkhaz
*Ubykh
Continental mean (core sample):

1.9 1.7 .4 4 2.3
Continental mean (genetic and core samples): 1 1.8 .3 3.4 1.7 10. TABLE Continuum types, by continent(based on short scal of * Languagesnot includedin core sample. ** Languagesnot includedin either core or genetic sample. t The entry for Bantu is the type shown by most languagesof this family.
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5.1. CONCRETE EXAMPLES showing that head-marked patterns are favored
include the following.

5.11. WORD The facts about word order presented in ?3.4 show that ORDER.
the head-marked clause patternfavors verb-initialword order.Clauses of other i.e. types-dependent-marked, split, and double-marked, all the types having a strong dependent-markedcomponent in their grammar-favor verb-final order.33This distributionmay be functionally motivated. But as a structural pattern, apart from functional motivation, it gives evidence for the favored characterof head-markedgrammar.One piece of evidence is the fact that the head-marking languageshave the greatest freedomof choice as to word order: they can be either verb-initialor verb-finalwith equal ease. Non-head-marking languagesare much less flexible as a class, and tend to be confinedto the verbfinal type. Another piece of evidence is the fact that the verb-initialorder favored by the head-markedclause is a much less frequent order, cross-linclause. guistically, than the verb-finaltype favored by the non-head-marked These two pieces of evidence can be restatedin termsof criteriafor markedness andunmarkedness.The head-marking languagetype behaves like the unmarked category, in that it displays the greaterfrequency of formal variety (of wordorder types); and it systematicallyincludes a subtype (verb-initial word order) that is rareover-all, and particularly rarein non-head-marking languages.Nonhead-marking languagesbehave like the markedcategoryin that most of them exhibit neutralizationof word-ordertypes to a single possibility, SOV. (The word-ordertypes themselves also fit criteria for markedness:the verb-final type is unmarkedin that it has the widest range, and appears where we find the analog to neutralization;the verb-initialtype is markedin that it appears only in restrictedfacilitatingenvironments,namely in the unmarkedmorphological type of language.)
5.12. HEADWARD As MIGRATION. shown in ?4.1, affixal morphology can move in only one direction, from dependent to head; and cliticized words most
often change from dependents to non-dependents,frequentlybecoming markers on heads. But a change from head to markerof dependent occurs only under restricted circumstances. 5.13. SOURCES. shown in ?4.2, head-marked As patternshave a greaternumber of possible sources than dependent-marked patterns.
5.14. SUBJECT-VERB As AGREEMENT. shown in ?3.1, many consistently
dependent-marking languages exhibit verbal agreement with one or two arguments; but few consistently head-marking languageshave an analogous dependent-marked pattern.This was shown graphicallyin the clusteringon Figs. 1-2. (The reason that it is specificallyverbalagreementwhich appearsin otherwise dependent-marking languages is that verbal agreement is a clause-level pattern, and the clause level was shown in ?3.31 to favor head-marking.) 5.15. POLYSYNTHESIS. amount of head-marked morphology that can be The
33 This discussion ignores SVO order because I assume, from its distribution on Tables 5 and 6, that it can be seen as a contextual variant of verb-initial order, favored by dependent-marked morphology.
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concentrated in a single word seems virtually unlimited, to judge from the elaborate polysynthesis of languages like those of the American Northwest. Yet the relation-marking morphologyof nouns is almost universallylimited to a single case affix. The maximumseems to be two-as in certain Australian languages, where a case-markednoun can take a second case suffix, marking agreementwith another noun in the sentence. Although some languages(e.g. the Eskimo, Algonkian, Siouan, and Iroquoianfamilies) have morphologically complex nouns, most of this complexity can probably be relegated to word formation (especially nominalizationof morphologicallycomplex verbs); but the complexity of verbs in the same languagesis arguablyinflectional.Put more simply, if we confine ourselves strictly to inflection, many languages have polysynthetic verbs, but there are no polysynthetic nouns.
5.16. SIMPLIFICATION. There is evidence that simplification involves a rela-
tive increase of head-markedover dependent-marked patterns(althoughoften an absolute decrease of all morphology),in comparisonto the source language. Thus in Chinese pidgin Russian-and throughoutthe spectrumof broken and and simplifiedRussian-relativization, subordination, coordinationare usually marked on the main rather than the dependent clause, in contrast to literary Russian usage (Nichols 1980). Similarly,English examples like 71 are simpler and more colloquial than 72 (= 38-39, above):
(71) MSince
I overslept, HIwas late.H (72) 1 overslept, M50 HI was late.H
Further evidence is the appearancein a numberof pidgins and creoles of subject and object markers which either can be viewed as, or go back etymologicallyto, pronominalclitics which functionas head-marked agreementor cross-referencing particles. For example, verbs in English-basedTok Pisin (Sankoff & Brown 1976, Smeall 1975)have a variablesubjectmarkeri- and an object marker-(i)m, which evidently go back to he and him.34 Although,in the contemporarycreole, i- and -(i)m are not subject and object markers(for i, cf. Smeall), their etymologies demonstratethat simplificationof English into ancestral Tok Pisin involved innovationof head-marking patternsby pronominal cliticization. In the ancestralpidgin, these forms markedthe subjectand object relations, and indicated the presence of subject and object; but they did not index their gender and numbercategories, as shown by the fact that neither of them is now restrictedto masculine singulararguments. A similarinnovationof head-marked clause patternsis found in Krio, which is also English-based.Krio and Tok Pisin are especially strong evidence for a correlation of head-markingwith simplification:the English source probably did not make systematic use of head-marked patterns,and pidginizationhence involved innovatingthem. Less strongevidence comes from the French-based Caribbeancreoles; these do not innovate, but simply preserve the subject and
34 Smeall argues that i- is not from Eng. he, but rather goes back to Melanesian subject agreement markers. The question is not crucial here: either etymological source yields a head-marked pattern, and hence supports my argument. I assume that Tok Pisin i- actually has a double etymology, reflecting both Eng. he and the Melanesian subject markers.
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object cliticization found in colloquial French. Generalizingover these creole examples, we can say that head-markedclause patterns will be retained, and may even be innovated, in pidginization.They may be lost-or their functions altered, as in Tok Pisin-with creolization, as the process of simplificationis reversed, and complexity is added to a former pidgin.
5.17. CONCLUSIONS. preceding paragraphs deal with the favored and The
disfavored status of morphologicalmarkingpatterns, not of whole languagetypes. When we look at the status of languagetypes, the opposite conclusion holds: dependent-marking languagesare the most frequent(see Figs. 3-4) and have the widest geographicaldistribution(Table 10). Head-marking languages are the next most frequent, but have the narrowestgeographicaldistribution; and split-marking double-marking languages are the least frequent, but have wide geographicaldistribution.
5.2. ABSTRACT PROPERTIES. preceding section gave eviGRAMMATICAL The
dence that head-marked patterns, althoughexotic from the IE perspective, are favored. This section will examinesome of the abstractgrammatical universally and relationsand will show that, propertiesof head-marked dependent-marked in various ways, head-markedpatterns increase the simplicity and efficiency of grammar.
5.21. RELATIONS WHICH ARE SUBCATEGORIZED BUT NOT GOVERNED. In what
follows, I use 'governed' to refer to dependents whose presence is required, and whose morphologicalform is determined, by their heads; and 'subcategorized' for those whose presence is required,but whose formis not determined by the head. The examples in ?4.1 show migrationof adpositions to verbs, where they figure as preverbs or similaraffixes. Exx. 61-62 show a typical syntactic consequence of such migration.Before migration,the verb subcategorizesthe PP but does govern it. I.e., the verb's semantics requiresthat phrase-which is typically the location of a stance or state verb, the goal of a motion verb (61a), the instrumentof a verb that semanticallyrequiresan instrument(62a), or the like; the morphological markingof the PP is not assignedby the verb, but rather reflects the semantic role of the phrase. After migration,however, the nowadpositionless NP is an object; the verb governs that object, and the former adposition serves as a formal markerof the verb's valence on the verb. Migration,then, has turneda non-governedactantinto a governedone, thus the increasingthe verb's valence. Furthermore, particular non-governedactant that has been removed is of a type-subcategorized but ungovernedlocation, goal, or instrument-which has caused numerous problems in grammatical analysis, because of its status midway between the governed argumentsand the adjuncts. Of course, the anomalyin traditional of grammar relationswhich are subcategorizedbut ungoverned results most obviously from the inability of traditionalgrammarto distinguishsubcategorization from government.But the cross-linguisticfrequency with which migrationconverts exactly these relations into governedones suggeststhat these relationsare inherentlyunstable, and even disfavored.
HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING
GRAMMAR
107
We thus have three hypotheses that warrant further testing: (a) subcategorized but ungoverned relations are unstable, perhaps disfavored; (b) polarization of nominal relations into governed and adverbialis favored; (c) decreasing the numberof ungovernedrelations in a clause is favored.35
5.22. SYNTACTIC BONDS.In head-marked grammatical relations, the depen-
dent is usually an optionalelement of the constituent.For instance,in languages with consistently head-markedclauses, the verb itself normallyconstitutes a complete sentence; full NP's are included only for emphasis, focus, disambiguation etc. Such languages are particularlyprone to use zero anaphora. In addition, in head-markedconstructions the relation of the head to any overt dependentsdiffersin characterfromthatof a head to a dependent-marked dependent. The dependent in a head-markedconstituent stands in a roughly appositive relationto the head (or, more precisely, to the coreferentialmarker on the head); the term 'government',developed in traditionalgrammaron the basis of exclusively dependent-marked relations (as is arguedin ?5.3), is not for constituents. Since the appearanceof Boas 1911, appropriate head-marked descriptionsof AmericanIndianlanguageshave insistedthat subjectand object in these languages are in apposition to the pronominalmarkerson the verb, ratherthan (as in Indo-European) being syntacticallygovernedby a verb which agrees with them.36This position is systematized and placed in a structural frameworkby Milewski-who, relyingon works like those in Boas 1911,claims that in head-markedclauses the verb is the only clause constituent. Since Bloomfield 1933, clause-level head-markedmorphologyhas usually been de35 The changes surveyed here decrease the number of ungoverned relations and increase the number of governed ones. In principle, hypothesis (c) could also read: (c') Increasing the number of governed relations in a clause is favored. This would predict that languages tend to add governed relations to their valence patterns-a contention which is rendered dubious by the existence of languages with a maximum of two valence places (and perhaps even one, to judge from Lushootseed). See again fn. 12. 36 For instance (Boas 1911:30): 'When, for instance, in Chinook, we find expressions like he her it with cut, man, woman, knife, meaning The man cut the woman with the knife, we may safely say that the nouns themselves appear without any trace of case relationship, merely as appositions to a number of pronouns.' The 'pronouns' are the pronominal elements on the verb; today we would represent the verb as he-her-it-with-cut. Note that 'case relationship' is treated as a syntactic relation in this passage. Boas regards possessive affixes (head-marked) on nouns as being in the same appositional relation to the possessor: 'In the same language [Chinook], the genitive relation is eliminated by substituting for it possessive expressions, like, for instance, the man, his house instead of the man's house.' For Boas, the appositional relation is a consequence of polysynthetic structure, which he defines as follows (62): 'in polysynthetic languages, a large number of distinct ideas are amalgamated by grammatical processes and form a single word, without any morphological distinction between the formal elements in the sentence and the contents of the sentence; and in the inflecting languages, on the other hand, a sharp distinction is made between formal elements and the material contents of the sentence, and stems are modified solely according to the logical forms in which they appear in the sentence.' Although he denies that Chinook is polysynthetic, he still classifies it among the 'languages in which the pronouns are not incorporated but loosely joined to the verb' (63). His term for the relation of the pronominals to the verb is 'modification' (63 et passim)-the same term he uses to describe the syntactic relations among words in a dependent-marking language (see the previous quote from p. 62).
108
scribed as 'cross-reference'ratherthan 'agreement';the latterterm is used for the head-marked indexingof one or two clause actantsin a generallydependentmarking language, as in Indo-European.The Boas-Bloomfield position has recently been formalizedby Van Valin 1985. Head-markedand dependent-marked relations, then, are seen as fundamentally differentin character.But in the sense in which this paper uses the term 'syntactic relation'-claiming fundamentalsyntactic identity between, say, a and head-marked a dependent-marked verb/objectrelation-they are identical. Compare the following head-markedAbkhaz clause (73a) and its dependentmarkedChechen translation(73b): (73) 'The man gave the woman a book.'
a. a-xac'a a-pth?3s (= 24, above) b. cu stag-Ma a-s?q?'3
M0_Ml_My_Hte-yt'.
the-manthe-womanthe-book it-to.her-he-gave-FINITE
zudcun-Mna kni:ga-M Mj-Helira. DEM.OBLperson-ERG woman-DAT book- NOMj-gave
In both sentences, 'man' is the subject, 'woman' the indirect object, 'book' the direct object, and the verb is the predicate; the nouns are dependent on the verb, which is the head of the clause. These are syntactic relations, as that term was defined in ?1; and in these relations, the two sentences are identical. In both of them the predicate is head; the nouns are its dependents; and it makes sense to ask which of a set of terms like 'subject', 'direct object', and 'indirect object' applies best to which noun. But even grantedthe identity of such syntactic relations, the two examples differ in the nature of the bond between, say, 'book' and the verb. In Chechen, it is the canonical relationof government, inherited from traditionalgrammar,and markedby case determinationand gender agreement(in the form of the noun class prefixj- on the verb). In Abkhaz, it is a looser link of apposition, specification, or the like between 'book' and the first prefix slot on the verb (and that prefix represents cross-reference, not agreement). Therefore it is necessary to distinguish 'syntactic relations' (as defined in ?1), such as subject or direct object, from what I will provisionallyterm 'syntactic bonds'. In 73a-b, the syntactic relations are identical, but the syntactic bonds differ. The difference in syntactic bonds correspondsto what Brown & Miller (1980:254ff.) term 'unilateral'and 'bilateral'dependency. The dependent-markeddependency (i.e. bond) is bilateral,in that the head requiresthe dependency dependent,and the dependentrequiresthe head. The head-marked (i.e. bond) is unilateral,in that the dependentrequiresthe head;but the headsince it can occur alone with the same reference-does not require the dependent. There are two other respects in which syntactic bonds appear to differ according to morphological marking type. One concerns relations between was worked out on the basis of IE gramclauses. The notion of subordination inter-clauserelations quite well. It exmar, and it handles dependent-marked non-finiteclauses of most OV languages, tends easily to the dependent-marked
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and to the dependent-markedfinite clauses with subordinatingconjunctions found in many VO languages.37It is much less successful where the semanbut tically subordinateclause bears no marksof subordination, the semantically principal clause does, in head-markedconstructions like these (= 39-40, above):
(74) English (75) Makah I overslept, Mso
M'udu:4-s-isi
HI
was late.H (= 39, above) Hp'usak ba:babu:pibitxsi.
because-lsg.-RESP tired I.overworked 'I'm tired because I overworked.' (Jacobsen, 113) Another example showing that head-marked relations differ in character from
dependent-markedones comes from PP's. Head-marked,i.e. inflecting, adpositions are often called somethingother than prepositionsor postpositions; e.g., the Mayan grammaticaltraditionuses the term 'relationalnoun' rather than 'preposition'for words like that in ex. 15.
5.23. CENTRICITY.38 Head-marked constituents can be endocentric where
their dependent-markedand double-markedcorrespondentsare always exocentric. According to Bloomfield's definitionfor English (1933:194ff.), an endocentricconstructionis one whose head has the same distribution the entire as construction; an exocentric one has a head whose distributionis not that of the whole constituent. For instance, NP is endocentric:the head noun and the whole NP both have the syntactic distribution a noun. Prepositionalphrases of and clauses are exocentric in English: the prepositionor verb does not have the distributionof a PP or an S. Thus the prepositioncannot be substitutedfor the PP, and hence the non-sentencehoodof *He wrote to or *I talked about. But consistently head-markinglanguages have no exocentric constructions. Head-marked adpositionalphrasesand sentences DOhave the same distribution
37 This is actually an oversimplification. Linguists in the USSR continue to debate about whether the dependent-marked clause-chaining constructions of Uralic, Altaic, and Northeast Caucasian represent subordination. Grammarians who deny that chained clauses represent subordination do so on formal grounds: chained clauses lack the finite verbs and subordinating conjunctions that are definitive of subordination in Russian; they are therefore 'reduced clauses' (oboroty), i.e. phrases, and hence parts of simple sentences (e.g. Magometov 1963:263, 1965:341). Of the grammarians who recognize subordination, some have apparently done so on functional grounds: chaining conveys the meaning of subordination (e.g. Jakovlev 1940:175 ff.) In most recent works, subordination is recognized on formal grounds: where the chained clause has a subject different from that of the main clause, it cannot be a reduced construction (by the definition of oborot current in the Russian grammatical tradition); it is therefore a subordinate clause (e.g. Ozdoev 1981, Gadziev 1954, 1963), but same-subject chained clauses are still parts of simple sentences. Juldasev (1977:134-8, 153, 155) regards even same-subject chained clauses as subordinate clauses, arguing (153) that the relation of what we would call control proves that they are not parts of simple sentences. Some of this debate is summarized by Ozdoev (21-4). The problem lies in the analysis of dependent clauses, which are neither true subordinates nor true coordinates. (For a solution to this dilemma, see Foley & Van Valin 1984, Ch. 6, and Van Valin 1985.) No one denies that the non-main clause can be semantically equivalent to a Russian subordinate clause, or that it is syntactically non-main; the only difficulty lies in the formal non-congruity between chained clauses and the subordinate clauses of Russian. 38 This section owes much to discussions with Robert Van Valin and Joan Bresnan.
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as theirheads. For instance, in the head-marked adpositionalphrasesof Abkhaz and Tzutujilshown in exx. 14-15, the dependentnouns can be omitted, leaving heads which can stand alone:
(76) Abkhaz (77) Tzutujil
a-Hq'ns
'at it' 'because of him/her/it, by him/her/it'
its-at
ruu-Hmajk
3sg.-because.of In other words, these head-markedadpositionshave the same distributionsas do the entire phrases which they head. Similarly,as is often pointed out, the head-markedverb constitutes an independentutterance;i.e., it has the distribution of a sentence. The constituent which it heads is thereforeendocentric. Although all head-markedconstituents are endocentric, it is not conversely the case that all dependent-markedconstituents are exocentric. Dependentmarked NP's like those of 6 and 17-18 are endocentric. The opposition of endocentric to exocentric arises only where constituents are headed by governing or valence-bearingwords-verbs or adpositions, to cite the clearest examples. To refine the above statement, then: a constituentheaded by a governing or valence-bearingword will be endocentric if it is head-marked,but exocentric if dependent-marked.39 There are two ways of formalizingthe notion of centricity: one relying on definition, projection,and one on externaldistribution.Onthe projection-based a phrase is endocentric if its head and its dominatingcategory are projections of the same lexical category, and it is exocentric otherwise(Bresnan 1982:296). On this definition, 'because it is the projectionof no lexical category, S is an exocentric category in all languages'(297). Such a definitionis validfor English and similarlanguages,where S is indeed not a projectionof V. But for a number languages, field linguists (beginningwith Boas; see again fn. of head-marking 36) have insisted that the verb is equivalent to a clause or sentence, and that any independent nominals in a clause are in apposition to morphemesof the verb ratherthan governed by the verb. This amountsto an informalclaim that S is a projection of V in such languages;and this means that S is endocentric on a definitionbased on lexical projection. On a formaldefinitionof centricitybased on externaldistribution,a category is endocentric if the head may be freely substitutedfor the entire constituent (as e.g. houses is substitutable for several large white houses in the context I , in the endocentric English NP). This is precisely what occurs in saw verb without overt inhead-markedclauses and PP's. Since the head-marked dependent arguments is equivalent in meaning to an English verb with pronominal actants, substitutingthe verb for the entire clause is fully normalin all contexts; it has no more effect on syntactic structurethan does pronom39 A dependent-marked governed constituent might qualify as endocentric in a language tolerating a good deal of zero anaphora-since, in such a language, a head in isolation could be interpreted as having zero dependents, and on that interpretation would stand alone. Such an analysis would depend on a very literal reading of Bloomfield's criterion, and on the willingness of grammarians to let discourse features like anaphora affect the definitions of constituents below the sentence.
llf
inalizationin English. Since the head-marked adpositioncontains a markerof its understoodobject, it is equivalentto an Englishadpositionplus pronomirnal object; and substitutionis again possible in all contexts. Examplesof PP's are 76-77 above. In general, a head-markedvalence-bearingword bears inflectionalindicatorsof its arguments; those argumentsare thereforeoptionalclause constituents, and the inflected head word is not distinct from the type of constituent it heads. In another respect, however, the head-markedverb and clause are categocreates a varietyof nonriallydistinct. In head-marking Abkhaz, subordination finite verb forms such as verbal adverbs, participles,and verbal nouns. Such forms are not verbs; they head embeddedclauses, andhence have the syntactic functions of adverbials, modifiers, and nominalargumentsrespectively. If we assume that endocentricityof S entails formalidentityof finite mainverbs with subordinateclauses or their heads (just as it entails formal identity of finite mainverbs with mainclauses), then the Abkhazclause is exocentric. Predicates of many subordinateclauses must be non-finite; hence a finite verb cannot replace such subordinate clauses. By this criterion, Abkhaz, a consistently head-marking language, nonetheless has exocentric clauses. This is not true of all head-markinglanguages, however: thus Lakhota embeds finite verbs (or finite clauses) under NP just as easily as it inserts N under NP. The following example shows that nominalizationis done with a finite verb, followed by the same article that follows nouns:
(78) cheya-pi kj nawax'ti.
wail-3pl. ART I.heard 'I heard the wails, the wailing' (Boas & Deloria 1941:146),i.e. 'I
heard [Npthe [Nthey wail]]'.
Adpositionalphrases in both Abkhaz and Lakhota (and in all head-marking languages for which I have information)are endocentric by this criterion, as well as by the projectioncriterion. In Abkhaz-as in other languages,e.g. the Mayan group-they are categorially (and often etymologically) identical to possessively inflected nouns; hence there is no categorialdistinctionbetween PP and NP. In Lakhota-as in many other North American languages-adpositions are categorially(and often etymologically)identicalto adverbs;hence there is no categorialdistinction between PP and an adverb phrase. In summary:for both Lakhotaand Abkhaz, S and PP are endocentricon the criterion of projection;for Lakhota, but not for Abkhaz, S is endocentric on the criterion of external distributionas well (and on this criterion PP's are endocentricin both languages).Both of these constituentsare exclusively headmarked in both languages. The double-markedclause of Walbiri(Hale 1983) is endocentric on the criterionof projection. I know of no dependent-marked clause which is endocentricon either definition.It can evidently be concluded that the absence of head-markedmorphology restricts the clause to exocentricity, while the presence of head-markedmorphologygives the clause the option of being either exocentric or endocentric. Much the same is true at the phrase level. Head-markedPP's are endocentric, as just argued;the double-
112
markedpostpositional phrases of the Uralic languagesappearto be both proendocentricwhen they have pronominal jectionally and distributionally objects; and dependent-marked PP's are exocentric. Againthe absence of head-marked morphology restricts the PP to exocentricity, while the presence of headmarkedmorphologygives it the option of exocentricityor endocentricity.The fact that the absence of head-marking resultsin exocentricity,while its presence allows both exocentricity and endocentricity, shows that morphology limits syntax in this respect. The fact that head-marking permits either type of distributional centricity shows that distributionalcentricity and morphological entailsprojectional markingare two differentthings.The fact thathead-marking endocentricitysuggests that projectionalcentricityand morphological marking may not be distinct things. Centricity is another area in which the head-marking type emerges as unmarked (in the Praguean sense). The head-markedS has available to it two types of centricity, which are neutralized in the dependent-markedS; and neutralization diagnosticof markedness.Furthermore, ABSENCEheadis the of marked morphologyacts as a positive factor limitingthe privileges of occurrence of centricity types; but the PRESENCEsuch morphologydoes not act of as a positive factor, and hence does not limit the privileges of occurrence of centricity types. This statement about markednessdiffers from those given in ?5.1 in that it must be phrased in terms of the presence vs. absence of headmarkingmorphology,while those in ?5.1 were phrasedin termsof head-marked vs. dependent-marked morphology. There has been very little discussion of centricity in the literature,and to my knowledge none of it is explicitly based on considerationof head-marked constituents. The cross-linguisticgeneralizationsofferedin this section are thus based on fairly cursory examinationof a few samplelanguages,with very little help from the theoreticalliterature.They should be taken only as hypotheses.
5.24. INDEXING AMBIGUITIES HIERARCHIES. AND Head-marking systems are
faced with the problem of indicatingjust which clause actant stands in which of the relationsmarkedon the verb-a problemunknownto dependent-marking languages, in which each noun bears a markof its own function in the clause. Imagine a head-markinglanguage with person/numberagreement for three clause actants; and imagineconstructingin that languagea sentence with 3sg. actants in all slots. Ambiguityis possible, since the verb agrees with the same person/numbercombinationfor all three. There are various possible solutions to this impasse: (a) Set up a rigidhierarchyof animacy,definiteness,or the like, to determine which actant is eligible for the subject slot, which for the direct-objectslot, and which for the indirect-objectslot. This strategy may obscure semantic functions since it will, for example, mechanically select 'man' over 'dog' as subject on the basis of their hierarchicalranking,regardlessof who is biting whom. But it does answer the question of what agrees with what. (Further clarity can be added by using inverse person-marking obligatorypassivior zation when a non-agent outranks an agent in animacy and hence becomes
113
subject. This is done in a numberof head-marking languages, e.g. Blackfoot, Cree, and Nootka.) (b) Set up a rigid control or accessibility hierarchybased on syntactic relations. This will not clarify the hypotheticalexample described above, but it will be useful in disambiguating certaincoreferencerelations.Suppose that one of our three actants is coreferentialto, or possessed by, another. If the verb is obligatorilymade reflexive when, say, agent possesses patient,but not when agent possesses goal, then the presence or absence of reflexivizationwill help disambiguatethe construction.To cite a concrete example, Barber1975shows that a strict hierarchygoverns the interpretation the Greek middle-a form of which signals coreference between one actant and another, or between one actant and the possessor of another. (Greek, of course, is not a head-marking language;this example proves only that such a constraintcan arise, not that it arises in head-marking languages.) (c) Develop genderclasses, and let verbalinflectionindexgender. (See Heath 1975for the disambiguating functionof genderclasses.) It is particularly helpful if these are non-naturalgender classes; then they will intersect randomlywith properties like animacy or potential agency, and will provide maximally informative verbal inflection. In the absence of gender classes, other categories such as deixis, obviation, or shape classificationprovide additionalmeans for indexing nouns. (d) Mark the dependents themselves. This principle accounts for the desultory case inflection sometimes found in otherwise head-marking languages (e.g. the two-case oppositions of Adyghe and Shuswap), and for the doublemarkedclause type. (e) Develop a fixed word order for nominals. (f) Restrict the numberof overt NP's per clause. Thus Lushootseed, a Salishan language, appearsto allow only one overt NP per clause. This strategy, well grammaticalized,reduces the number of head-marking points and gives Lushootseed a non-head-marking cast, in contrast to its neighborsand kin. It eliminates the ambiguity,althoughit imposes restrictionsof its own. The above listing might suggest that rigid, grammaticalized hierarchies of animacy, control hierarchies, gender, fixed word order, and reduced valence are epiphenomenaof the head-marking type. But that is plainly not the case; all these phenomena are also found in dependent-marking languages. These features evidently have contributionsto make to languagesof all types. For example, gender classes of non-natural types contributeto the taxonomization of reality in languages where they make little or no contributionto text disambiguation.(Thatnaturalgenderclasses such as those of Dyirbal[Dixon 1972] taxonomize the universe is, of course, triviallyobvious.) For instance, depenChechen and Ingushhave non-natural dent-marking genderclasses whose taxonomic value is revealed by their role in riddles and in contexts of poetic equation (Nichols 1985).Genderclasses found in some of the dependent-marking Pama-Nyunganlanguages of Australiahave taxonomic value that echoes folk taxonomy and mythic functions (Dixon 1980:273-4);they also play a role
114
in discourse coreference(Foley & Van Valin, ?7.5). However, it is still possible that at least some of the occurrencesof these phenomenain dependent-marking languages are relics of former head-markedpatterns. This is a question that can be answered only by specialists in the histories of individualfamilies.
5.25. FLATSYNTAX.Head-marked patterns contribute to a flat syntax which
minimizes intra-clauseand inter-clause structure, freeing a language to concentrate on the grammaticalization discourse prominenceand cohesion. In of fact it turns out that it is precisely for head-marking languagesthat a number of traditionalgrammatical questionsprove to be somewhatmoot, because pragmatic and discourse relations(ratherthan strictly syntactic relations)are being Thus Heath 1985arguesfor the dispensabilityof clause strucgrammaticalized. ture, using text data from a language with strong head-markingtendencies. Anotherexample comes from languageswhere access to particular verbalaffix slots is more obviously conditionedby pragmaticand discourse factors, such as animacy and definiteness, than by strictly syntactic relations. A well-documentedexample is object choice with three-placeverbs in the Bantulanguages (Hyman & Duranti). Similar phenomena are illustratedby object choice in Huichol (Comrie 1982)and in Mayan (Larsen & Norman 1979),and by subject choice in languageswith animacy-based passivizationand inverse person marking. All such patterns involve head-marking.The concluding statement of Hyman & Duranti shows how the grammaticalization non-syntactic propof erties is crucially linked to head-marking tendencies, which are manifestedin Bantu by cliticization of pronouns: 'The conclusion is that, within Bantu as well as without, when a language has clitics[on the verb, i.e. head-marked clause relations], semantic hierarchiesacquire an upper hand in determining object properties,while grammatical considerationsstep to the side' (237).That semantic hierarchies such as animacy are hierarchiesof potential discourse prominenceis arguedby Silverstein 1976. In summary,then, the head-marked clause patterns-in grammaticalizing animacy, definiteness etc., rather than clause-level syntactic relations-are grammaticalizing (potential)discourse relations, at the expense of the clarity and discreteness of clause-level syntactic relations.
5.3. SOME IMPLICATIONS THEORY. FOR We have now seen a number of dif-
ferent respects in which head-markedand dependent-marked syntactic relations differ, often considerably.A numberof empiricalquestions remainto be investigated:How do double-marked relationsbehave in these respects? Does the occasional head-markedpattern in a mostly dependent-marking language have the unilateralsyntactic bonds, centricity, flatness etc. exhibited by the same relation in a consistently head-marking language?The discussion in ?5.2 pertained mostly to clause relations; can the generalizationsmade there be extended to phrases and sentences? Even in the absence of a complete account, the evidence that morphological markingtypes have implicationsfor abstractgrammatical structureis sufficient to force some rethinkingof the foundations of syntactic theory. It turns out that many fundamentalanalytic notions of formal and theoretical syntax are
115
relations;some of them even seem to be based designed for dependent-marked on an implicit assumptionthat grammaticalrelations are normallydependentmarked. The effects of this assumption were discussed above in connection with the distinctionbetween syntacticrelationsand syntacticbonds (?5.22)and with centricity(?5.23). The same assumptionappearsto underliethe conception of case and government presented by Chomsky (1982:48 ff.) The effect of Chomsky's system is to build into the fundamentalsof core grammarthe denatureof English(andgenerallyIE) morphosyntax.The basic pendent-marking principlesare these (this enumeration preservesChomsky'sterms, but is stated informally): (79) a. An NP having phonetic content must have Case. b. Case is assigned by governingcategories. c. A verb governs and assigns Case to its complements(in the VP). d. INFL(the verbal inflection comprisingtense and agreement)governs the subject of a tensed S, and assigns the nominativeCase to it. That is, the verb does not govern its subject or assign case to it; INFL does that. In all other grammatical relations, the traditionallyrecognizedhead governs and assigns case to the traditionallyrecognized dependent. Subject-verb agreement is the only salient head-markedpattern of English, and the nontraditionalelement INFL makes it possible to treatthatpatternas thoughit were dependent-marked.Chomsky's analysis of case and governmentcan be read as makingthe following implicit assumptions: (80) a. Dependency and governmentare the same thing. b. Every dependent must bear the markerof its syntactic relation. c. Heads govern dependents, and assign formal markingto them. The use of INFL accommodates the sole head-markedpattern of English to these assumptions. (It also represents the exocentricity of the English clause as a structuralfact; and by treatingthe subject as not dependenton the lexical verb, it captures the fact that S is not a lexical projectionof V in English.) This discussion has not questioned the adequacyfor English of Chomsky's analysis; it has simply pointed out that his analysis rests on an assumptionof the universal, necessary, and exclusive characterof dependent-marked grammar. But dependent-marked patternsare NOT universal;they are possibly not even the preferredtype. (For a detailedcritiqueof Chomsky'ssystem as applied to a head-marking language, see Van Valin.)
5.4. CONCLUSIONS. Despite the efforts of formal grammarians to take a range
of languages into consideration, there is a glaringgap in the typological coverage: the exotic languagesthat have so far received significantattentionhave been almost exclusively dependent-marking (Japanese, Korean, Finnish, Malayalam, Australianlanguages)or double-marking (Turkish,Arabic, Hebrew, Australian languages). Of the head-marking languages, only Navajo has received significant theoretical attention. In addition, RelationalGrammarhas investigated a number of head-marking languages (primarilyfrom the Algonkian, Salishan,and Wakashangroups);but these languageshave not been used
116
to raise questions of constituency, centricity, syntactic bonds, government

etc.40
The view of grammarpresented here raises serious questions for universal grammar.I have arguedthat the theoreticalapparatusof classical, traditional, is structural,andformalgrammar heavily based on dependent-marked syntax.41 If the hypothesis of the universallypreferrednature of head-marked patterns holds true, then we will have to recognize that describingthe world's languages in standardtheoretical terms is not merely Eurocentricdistortion, but in fact forces the unmarkedgrammaticalstructureinto a frameworkdevised for the marked type. The fact that linguistic theory is ultimatelyrooted in linguistic typology shows how importantit is to capture the uniqueness of individual languages in cross-linguisticallyand cross-theoreticallymeaningfulterms.42 REFERENCES
Novoiranskiejazyki, ABAEV,V. A., et al. 1982(eds.) Osnovy iranskogo jazykoznanija: I. Moscow: Nauka. E. BARBER, J. W. 1975. Voice-beyond the passive. BLS 1.16-24. M. BARKER, A. R. 1962. Klamath texts. (UCPL 30.) Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1933. Language. New York: Holt. LEONARD. BLOOMFIELD, . 1962. The Menomini language. New Haven: Yale University Press. BOAS,FRANZ.1911 (ed.) Handbook of American Indian languages, I. (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40,1.) Washington, DC: GPO. [Introduction reprinted, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1964.] . 1947. Kwakiutl grammar, with a glossary of the suffixes. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 37:3.201-337. - and ELLADELORIA. 1941. Dakota grammar. (Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 23:2.) Washington, DC: GPO. JOAN. 1982 (ed.) The mental representation of grammatical relations. CamBRESNAN, bridge, MA: MIT Press. E. BROWN, K., and J. E. MILLER.1980. Syntax: A linguistic introduction to sentence structure. London: Hutchison.
40 At least three proposals incorporatehead-markingconfigurationsinto phrase structure: McCawley1971,Keenan 1972a,and Jelinek1984.Van Valin 1985compareshead-marking-derived analyses of a head-marking language.Foley & Van Valinoutlines and dependent-marking-derived a theory that takes extensive account of head-marking patterns. 41 The same can be said for the grammatical of framework this paper. It is no accidentthat the and eightdiagnosticpointsof Table3 were easy to establishfor dependent-marking double-marking languages(the only problemswere decidingwhichof two patternswas basic, andfindingexamples languageswas of both nounand pronounobjectsof adpositions),whereasclassifyinghead-marking fraughtwith problems(lack of canonical adpositions, lack of canonical PP's, lack of canonical appearance independent arguments, removalof of NP and adjectives, reducedvalence, infrequent were some commonones). Partof the difficultyresultsfrom the lack argumentsby incorporation languages;but probablya greaterpart is beof uniformdescriptivetechniquesfor head-marking cause of the assumptionof uniformconstituenttypes and partsof speech which is necessitatedby my approach.
42
After this paper had been accepted, Igor Mel'cuk informed me that ex. 3 is an example of a
but head-marked not endocentricconstruction(see ?5.23);and both he and MarkDurieinformed language,Kayartilt(see Evans MS), whichuses cases to markmodalityas well me of an Australian as syntacticrelationsand thus stacks up to four case suffixes on a single noun, therebyfalsifying the generalizationin ?5.15.
117
1979 (eds.) The languages of Native America: CAMPBELL, LYLE,and MARIANNE MITHUN.
Historical and comparativeassessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.

CAPELL, A. 1965. A typology of concept domination. Lingua 15.451-62. CARTER,HAZEL. 1963. Notes on the tonal system of Northern Rhodesian Plateau Tonga.
London: Her Majesty's StationeryOffice.
CHOMSKY,NOAM. 1982. Lectures on government and binding: The Pisa lectures. 2nd
edn. (Studies in generativegrammar,9.) Dordrecht:Foris.
guages: An approachto the comparative-historical problem. LinguaPosnaniensis 23.81-6. --. 1981.Languageuniversalsandlinguistictypology. Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press. --. 1982. Grammatical relationsin Huichol. In Hopper & Thompson,95-116. 1973. The Jacaltec language.(LanguageScience Monographs,12.) DAY, CHRISTOPHER. Bloomington:IndianaUniversity. DAYLEY, JON P. 1981. A Tzutujil grammar. Berkeley: University of California dissertation. Indiana University. ROBERT W. 1972. The Dyirbal languageof North Queensland.Cambridge: M. DIXON, University Press. -. 1980. The languagesof Australia.Cambridge: University Press.
1933. A grammar of Wishram. Yale dissertation. DYK, WALTER. MS. EVANS,NICHOLAS. Modal case marking in Kayartilt. WILLIAM A., and ROBERT VANVALINJR. 1984. Functional syntax and universal D. FOLEY,
DECSY, GYULA. 1966. Yurak chrestomathy. (Uralic and Altaic series, 50.) Bloomington:
BERNARD. 1980. The order of case and possessive suffixes in the Uralic lanCOMRIE,
grammar.Cambridge: University Press. M. GADZIEV, M. 1954.Sintaksislezginskogojazyka,I: Prostoepredlozenie.Maxackala: Dagucpedgiz. --. 1963. Sintaksis lezginskogo jazyka, II: Sloznoe predlozenie. Maxackala: Dagucpedgiz. PAUL.1977. Ordrelineaire et dependance syntaxique:Contribution une tyGARDE, a pologie. Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique,Paris, 72:1.1-26.
LARRY.1977. Headless relatives in the Southwest: Are they related? BLS GORBET,
3.270-78. JOSEPH 1963. Some universalsof grammar H. GREENBERG, with particular reference to
the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, ed. by J. H. Greenberg, 73-113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. L. HALE, KENNETH 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1.5-47. JOHNA. 1983. Word order universals. New York: Academic Press. HAWKINS, 1975. Some functional relationships in grammar. Lg. 51.89-104. HEATH,JEFFREY. . 1985. Discourse in the field: Clause structure in Ngandi (Australia). In Nichols & Woodbury, 89-110. HEWITT,B. G. 1979. Abkhaz. (Lingua descriptive series, 2.) Amsterdam: NorthHolland. HOPPER, PAULJ., and SANDRA THOMPSON. (eds.) Studies in Transitivity. (Syntax A. 1982 and semantics, 15.) New York: Academic Press. HYMAN,LARRY DURANTI. M., and ALESSANDRO 1982. On the object relation in Bantu. In Hopper & Thompson, 217-39. VJACESLAV 1965. Obsceindoevropejskaja, praslavjanskaja i anatolijskajajaV. IVANOV, zykovye sistemy. Moscow: Nauka. WILLIAM JR. 1979. Noun and verb in Nootkan. The Victoria Conference JACOBSEN, H., on Northwestern Languages, ed. by Barbara S. Efrat (Heritage records, 4), 83155. Victoria, BC: Provincial Museum. N. JAKOVLEV, F. 1940. Sintaksis cecenskogo literaturnogo jazyka. Moscow & Leningrad: Akademija Nauk.
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JELINEK, ELOISE. 1984. Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural Lan-
guage and Linguistic Theory 2.39-76.

JESPERSEN,OTTO. 1961. Modern English grammar, VII. London: Alien & Unwin. JULDASEV, A. A. 1977. Sootnosenie deepricastnyx i licnyx form glagola v tjurkskix
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KEENAN, EDWARDL. 1972a. On semantically based grammar. LI 34.413-62.
--. 1972b. Relative clause formation in Malagasy. The Chicago Which Hunt: Papers from the Relative Clause Festival, ed. by Paul Peranteau et al., 169-89. Chicago: CLS. KUIPERS, AERT H. 1967. The Squamish language: Grammar, texts, dictionary. (Janua linguarum, Series practica, 73.) The Hague: Mouton. . 1974. The Shuswap language: Grammar, texts, dictionary. (Janua linguarum, Series practica, 225.) The Hague: Mouton. KUNO, SUSUMU. 1973. The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. JERZY.1964. The inflectional categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: KURYLOWICZ, Winter. LANGDON, MARGARET. 1977. Syntactic change and SOV structure: The Yuman case. Mechanisms of syntactic change, ed. by Charles N. Li, 255-90. Austin: University of Texas Press. . 1979. Some thoughts on Hokan, with particular reference to Pomoan and Yuman. In Campbell & Mithun, 592-649. . 1982. Pomoan, Seri, and Yuman. Paper read at Conference on Far Western Languages and Prehistory, Santa Cruz. and 1979. Correlates of ergativity in Mayan grammar. LARSEN, THOMAS, WILLNORMAN. Ergativity: Toward a theory of grammatical relations, ed. by Frans Plank, 347-70. London: Academic Press. CHRISTIAN. LEHMANN, 1984. Der Relativsatz: Typologie seiner Strukturen, Theorie seiner Funktionen, Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tubingen: Narr. LEVINE, ROBERT. 1977. The Skidegate dialect of Haida. Columbia University dissertation. JAMES 1971. Where do noun phrases come from? Semantics, ed. by D. MCCAWLEY, Danny Steinberg & Leon Jacobovits, 217-31. Cambridge: University Press. MAGOMETOV, A. 1963. Kubacinskij jazyk. Tbilisi: AN GSSR. A. . 1965. Tabasaranskij jazyk. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. ALECP. 1984. On the nature of grammatical relations. (LI monograph 10.) MARANTZ, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A. MELYUK, IGOR 1979. Studies in dependency syntax. (Linguistica extranea, Studia, 2.) Ann Arbor: Karoma. . 1981. Types de dependance syntagmatique entre les mot-formes d'une phrase. Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique, Paris, 76.1-59. TADEUSZ. MILEWSKI, 1967. La structure de la phrase dans les langues indigenes de l'Amerique du nord. In his Etudes typologiques sur les langues indigenes de l'Amerique (Prace Komisji Orientalistycznej, 7), 70-101. Krakow: PAN. JOHANNA. NICHOLS, 1973. Suffix ordering in Proto-Uralic. Lingua 32.227-38. . 1980. Pidginization and foreigner talk: Chinese pidgin Russian. Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. by Elizabeth C. Traugott (Current issues in linguistic theory, 14), 397-407. Amsterdam: Benjamins. . 1984. Another typology of relatives. BLS 10.524-41. . 1985. Poetic equation in Chechen-Ingush. Studia Caucasica 6.12-24. C. 1985 , and ANTHONY WOODBURY. (eds.) Grammar inside and outside the clause: Some views of theory from the field. Cambridge: University Press. OINAS, FELIX. 1961. The development of some postpositional cases in Balto-Finnic. (Suomalais-ugrilaisen toimituksia, 123.) Helsinki: SUS. I. OZDOEV, A. 1981. K voprosu o sloznopodcinennom predlozenii v ingusskom literaturnom jazyke. Voprosy vajnaxskogo sintaksisa 1981.21-34.
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PAUL. 1974. The Navajo relative clause. IJAL 40.202-46. PLATERO, H. POUTSMA, 1916. A grammar of Late Modern English. Groningen: Nordhoff. BROWN. and 1976. The origins of syntax in discourse. Lg. GILLIAN, PENELOPE SANKOFF, 52.631-66. 1915. The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report. AA 17.534-58. SAPIR,EDWARD. --. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt Brace. --. 1929. Central and North American languages. Encyclopedia Britannica 5.138-41. [Reprinted in his Selected writings, ed. by David G. Mandelbaum, 169-78. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949.] PAUL, and FE T. OTANES. 1972. Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley & SCHACHTER, Los Angeles: University of California Press. MICHAEL. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. Grammatical cateSILVERSTEIN, gories in Australian languages, ed. by Robert M. W. Dixon, 112-71. Canberra: AIAS. --. 1979. Penutian: An assessment. In Campbell & Mithun, 650-91. 1975. CHRISTOPHER. A quantitative analysis of variation: i in Tok Pisin. BLS SMEALL, 1.403-7. SUSAN. 1979. Uto-Aztecan: An assessment for historical and comparative linSTEELE, guistics. In Campbell & Mithun, 444-544. N. TERESCENKO, M. 1973. Sintaksis samodijskix jazykov. Leningrad: Nauka. LUCIEN.1966. Elements de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck. TESNIERE, D., VANVALIN,ROBERT JR. 1985. Case marking and the structure of the Lakhota clause. In Nichols & Woodbury, 363-413. W. KENNETH 1977. Wintun prehistory: An interpretation based on linguistic WHISTLER, reconstruction of plant and animal names. BLS 3.157-74. [Received 24 August 1983; revision received 26 January 1985; accepted 6 June 1985.]

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GRAMMAR HEAD-MARKINGAND DEPENDENT-MARKING

University of California, Berkeley

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

baland 'high mountain' bolind sefer 'school', lit. 'book house'

GRAMMAR AND DEPENDENT-MARKING HEAD-MARKING

I believe the distinctionof marking presenceor type of dependencyvs. the

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

Ha:xca 'father's money'

'the boy's house'

'with (my, one's, etc.) brother' 'without (my, etc.) brother'

without brother-GEN 'toward (my, etc.) brother' (13)Hk brat-Mu

GRAMMAR AND DEPENDENT-MARKING HEAD-MARKING

(18) Md-ovxa Hxi

'hot water' 'hot milk'

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

'This is a book that I have written.' (Kuno, 234)

GRAMMAR AND DEPENDENT-MARKING HEAD-MARKING

ing Arizona Tewa example (Gorbet 1977:272,citing work by P. Kroskrity):

and is subject to constraints that do not apply to 36. In contrast, Chechen

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

2.7. NEUTRAL MARKING exemplified by certain NP's in Tagalog, where the is

'These fleas are killing me!'

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

TOTALS FULL SHORT

TYPE FULL SHORT

H H H H H DIH D/H H D//HD D/H D/H H D D H

D D D D D D D ? -I [-] _ H D/(H) D D D o H [o] O D//h

D/h D/h DII(H)D

D D D (D)/I (D)/I (D)/I

H (D) D D D o (D)/H D/H H H O D D D D/h H H D/h H H

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

Nootka Patwin (Hill) Rotuman

0/1 2/0 2/0

0/4 7/0 4/0

0/3 4/0 3/0

H Sacapultec Samoan H Sahaptin(NW)? Shuswap [-] D Squamish Turkish D/(H) H Tzutujil

H D D//h H d/H D/H H

H d D d D D H H d/H [o] D/H o H d

0/2 2/0 3/2 1/2 1/2 3/1* 0/2

0/6 5/0 7/2 1/5 3/4 7/5 0/6

0/4 4/0 5/2 1/4 1/4 5/3 0/4

Wichita Wishram Wiyot

TABLE3. (Continued) LEGEND:

H D H/D H//D o ? 0/3, 2/1 etc.

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR HEAD-MARKING

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

'the woman's arm' (Carter,25)

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

LANGUAGE, VOLUME62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

dependent dependent dependent dependent

pronoun noun pronoun noun

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

The following illustrateYurak possessive phrases:

HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

(55) a. Pronoun possessor: