ABSTRACT

Linguistic expression which more closely specifies or determines the meaning of another expression ( head) semantically and syntactically: long book, where book is the head and long is the modifier describing the book. Syntactically, the constituent made up of a modifier and its head are of the same form class as the head ( endocentric construction). In English, nouns are typically modified by adjectives (long book) or prepositional phrases (the book on the table), and verbs by adverbs (read quickly). A modifier can be either prespecifying or postspecifying, depending on whether it precedes or follows the head. While Bloomfield (1933) uses the term modifier only for attributive constructions, Trubetzkoy (1939) uses it for the relationship between verb and object, and Bartsch and Vennemann (1980) use it for the relationship between subject and predicate verb. The terminology for the two elements involved is diverse: ‘head/center’ vs ‘attribute’ (Bloomfield), ‘head center’ vs ‘modifier’ (Fries), ‘determine’ vs ‘determinant’ (Trubetzkoy), ‘operator vs operand’ (Bartsch and Vennemann), and ‘head’ vs ‘modifier’ (Lyons). (also complementation and modification)

References

Bartsch, R. and T.Vennemann. 1982. Grundzüge der Sprachtheorie. Tübingen. Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York. Fries, C.C. 1927. The structure of English: an introduction to the construction of English sentences.