Re: adjectives

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

>Fascinating!  Now, a dumb question from you-know-who...
I'm still waiting for the dumb question. And I can't guess who's going to
ask it, because I don't know of anybody on the list who regularly asks such
things. :)

> >There is a strong statistical correlation between
> >head-marking/dependant-marking and which subclass of open adjectives a
> >language has.
> >
> >I) Head-marking languages tend to have type (b) adjectives
> >II) Dependent-marking languages tend to have type (a) adjectives
>
>I keep getting screwed up on head- vs. (the other one--tail?)-marking
It is head vs. dependent marking.

>languages in possessives.  If you said something like:
>
>Yoon's unicorn (yes, an old bad pun)
>
>would that be head-marking or other-marking?
Dependent-marking.

>In other words, does head-marking wrt possessives mean the owner or the
>owned (well, yes, there *are* other uses of the possessive, but for
>simplicity...) is marked?
The head of a phrase is the word that defines the properties of the phrase.
In "Yoon's unicorn" we are discussing a unicorn, so "unicorn" is the head.
Head-marking (as the term implies) means that the affix is attached to the
head, while dependent-marking means that the affix is on a word that is not
the head of the phrase in question.

In possessive contexts, a head-marking lang marks the possessum, while a
dependent-marking lang marks the possessor. In verb phrases, a head-marking
lang marks the verb, while dependent-marking lang marks the noun.

And of course, many languages do not cleanly fall into either category, but
span both. Latin, for example, has case (dependent-marking) but also has
subject agreement on the verb (head-marking). Chickasaw has case
(dependent-marking) and also verbal agreement for subject and object
(head-marking).



Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley