| head |
| Definition: A word that determines the syntactic type of the language unit that it belongs to (e.g., a noun phrase or a compound noun). |
| Example:
(1) In big bad John, the word John is the head, because it indicates that the phrase is a noun phrase. The adjectives big and bad modify this head noun, making the phrase big bad John a noun like John, not an adjective like big. (2) With the compound noun bagman, -man is the head, because it determines the compound noun's basic meaning, while bag- modifies this meaning. Thus, a bagman is a kind of man, not a kind of bag. |