Heads, modifiers and meaning

The distinction between heads and modifiers has been put in terms of one word, the head, that controls the other words in a phrase, the modifiers. If we think of language as a way of conveying information – which is what every speaker does with language some of the time – we can consider the head as conveying a central piece of information and the modifiers as conveying extra information. Thus in the phrase expensive books the head word books indicates the very large set of things that count as books, while expensive indicates that the speaker is drawing attention not to the whole set but to the subset of books that are expensive. In the longer phrase the expensive books, the word the signals that the speaker is referring to a set of books which have already been mentioned or are otherwise obvious in a particular context.

The same narrowing-down of meaning applies to phrases containing verbs. Note first that different verbs have different powers of control. Some verbs, as in (6a), exclude a direct object, other verbs require a direct object, as in (6b), and a third set of verbs allows a direct object but does not require one, as in (6c).

Consider the examples drove and drove a Volvo. Drove indicates driving in general; drove a Volvo narrows down the activity to driving a particular make of car. Consider further the phrase on the plate. The first word, on, signals a relationship between some entity, say a piece of toast or a knife, and the surface of something; the plate tells us what that something is, that is, it narrows down the meaning ‘being on’ to ‘being on a particular plate’.

Finally in this brief set of examples, we return to the point made earlier in passing that heads may have several modifiers. This is most easily illustrated with verbs; the phrase bought a present for Jeanie in Jenners last Tuesday contains four modifiers of bought – a present, for Jeanie, in Jenners and last Tuesday. A present signals what was bought and narrows down the activity from just buying to buying a present as opposed, say, to buying the weekly groceries. For Jeanie narrows the meaning down further – not just ‘buy a present’ but ‘buy a present for Jeanie’, and similarly for the phrases in Jenners and last Tuesday.