Knowledge base · source

Nichols 1986

Nichols, Johanna (1986). Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62(1), 56–119.

typological-framework general

Chapters citing this source

Sentences of the first edition citing this source

1. Bugaeva's analysis frames Ainu as "a head-marking language of the Pacific Rim" — after the framework of — and treats the structural mismatch between Ainu's head-marking profile and the dependent-marking profile of all its geographical neighbours as a positive argument against relatedness . no page A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu
2. Head-marking is "well attested in the Americas and Melanesia but vanishingly rare elsewhere" and characterizes the Greater Pacific Rim (GPR) macroarea — a population of languages whose distribution Nichols traces back more than ten millennia . no page A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu
3. The head/dependent-marking parameter is among the most diachronically stable typological features known ; its consistent divergence between Ainu and every language proposed as its relative accordingly constitutes evidence independent of the lexical record . no page A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu
4. Head-marking correlates — verbal cross-reference of arguments, noun incorporation, instrumental/directional affixes on verbs, inflected adpositions, pronominal affixes on nouns — differ systematically from dependent-marking correlates — case on nouns, adnominal genitive marking, agreement suffixes on attributives, uninflected adpositions governing case . no page A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu
5. Bugaeva et al.'s typological framing, drawing on , places the Hokkaido system within the Circum-Pacific appositive possessive type but distinguishes it by the fact that the modifier is a finite verbal clause (kor) rather than a nominal appositive . no page The Alienable/Inalienable Split and Possessive Classification
6. This is head-marking in the sense of : the head of the NP, not the dependent, bears the relational morphology. no page Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction
7. Typologically, the inalienable affiliative construction is head-marking in the sense of : the relational morphology (person prefix plus affiliative suffix) is borne entirely by the head noun, with no case or adposition marking the possessor dependent. no page Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction
8. External possession (EP) refers to a construction in which the possessor of a noun appears as a core argument of the main predicate rather than as a modifier inside the possessed NP; the possessor is thereby assigned a grammatical function — typically subject or object — by the verb rather than by the nominal head . 56–70 External Possession and Possessor Raising
9. The natural-force and applicative mechanisms sit closer to Type I (simple argument reduction) and to applicative constructions respectively; their co-existence in a polysynthetic head-marking language is typologically expected . no page External Possession and Possessor Raising
10. Satō describes the language as head-marking in the sense of , with the verb bearing the central information about which arguments fill its valence frame; external noun phrases may be absent, freely ordered, or arranged for discourse, while the indexes on the verb do the ordinary work of tracking who acts on whom . no page The Verb Word and Its Position-Class Template
11. That image renders head-marking in the sense of and matches Satō's argument-slot account of the same fact . no page Transitivity, Valence Classes, and Ambitransitivity
12. The architecture is head-marking in the sense of : a derived stem must enter one of the four argument-count classes — zero-place ambient predicates, one-place intransitives, two-place transitives, or three-place verbs with two bare objects — and the person-index set then diagnoses the class of the result. no page Denominal and Deverbal Verb Derivation
13. Satō describes the pattern as head-marking in the sense of : the verb, the head of its clause, bears the central information about which participants fill its valence frame, and a transitive verb may host both a subject index and an object index . no page Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms
14. This is consistent with the head-marking account of the Ainu verb given by Satō and with the typological framework of . no page First- and Second-Person Singular Affixes (ku=/en=, e=/e=)
15. The framing correctly reflects the head-marking character of the system: the verb carries the obligatory participant indexes while the independent pronouns are optional ; . no page The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering
16. Analytically this is the head-marking architecture of , used also by Satō . no page The Split-Intransitive (Active–Stative) Core
17. Hokkaido Ainu encodes the S/A/O distinction through person indexes that appear on the finite verb — head-marking in the sense of . no page Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate
18. Satō's 2025 characterisation places Ainu with head-marking languages in the sense of and develops the argument-indexing system without assigning an alignment label ‹speculative›. no page Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate
19. Ijäs’s learner image of argument “pockets” on the verb beside external “slots” renders the same head-marking intuition ; her terms are pedagogical and her example sentences constructed ‹consensus›. no page Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation: Overview
20. Satō frames the profile through Nichols's head-marking / dependent-marking distinction: the verb, as clausal head, bears obligatory person-indexing suffixes and prefixes that already satisfy all argument slots; overt NPs are accordingly optional, and when present they are appositional to those indexes rather than positional carriers of grammatical role . no page Basic Constituent Order and Head-Final Syntax
21. The result is a head-marking language in the sense of : the predicate head encodes grammatical relations, and the dependent nominal does not. no page Argument Realization: Affix Indexing and Free NP Order
22. Satō, following the head-marking framework of , describes the verb as the clausal head that bears the central information about which participants fill its valence frame . no page Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate
23. Nichols notes that head-marking languages achieve word-order freedom through either verb-initial or verb-final strategies with equal ease ; Ainu takes the verb-final option. 104 Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate
24. Bugaeva connects this pattern typologically to Nichols's observation that head-marking languages, in which relations are established on the verb rather than on NPs, have the greatest freedom to put the verb first — "establishing relations at the outset" — and that this is the functional pay-off of verb-initial order in many head-marking families . 104 Pragmatic Word-Order Permutation, Dislocation, and Argument Ellipsis
25. The head-marking analysis of Ainu (see ; ) predicts precisely the observed pattern: because roles are encoded on the predicate, overt NPs are free to appear, be omitted, or be placed wherever information structure directs them. 104 Pragmatic Word-Order Permutation, Dislocation, and Argument Ellipsis