HEAD
(Syntax; Morphology) Or, nucleus. The word that determines the syntactic category of a phrase. For example, the head of the noun phrase boiling hot water is the noun water. Analogously, the head of a compound is the stem that determines the semantic category of that compound. For example, the head of the compound noun handbag is bag, since a handbag is a bag, not a hand. The other elements of the phrase or compound modify the head, and are therefore the head's dependents (Miller, 2011). Headed phrases and compounds are called endocentric, whereas exocentric ("headless") phrases and compounds (if they exist) lack a clear head. Heads are crucial to establishing the direction of branching. Head-initial phrases are right-branching, head-final phrases are left-branching, and head-medial phrases combine left- and right-branching.
 Examine the following expressions:

1. big red dog
2. birdsong

HEAD, FUNCTIONAL OR LEXICAL
(Syntax) It is important to note that lexical heads are different from functional heads. Lexical heads are usually content words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions. They often have substantive descriptive content unlike functional heads. Functional heads, on the other hand, are usually grammatical words such as determiners, complementizers, inflection (Infl), particles like infinitival to, etc. (Radford 2004) Functional heads have an essentially grammatical function. | Taiwo Oluwaseun Ehineni, 2014

HEAD BANGING

1. (Morphology) A phonological word must be dominated by X₀ and cannot contain any xⁿ where n > 0 (words are complex head adjunction structures). These complex structures can be derived by head movement, external merge of simple or complex X₀s, by Lowering, or perhaps by Local Dislocation. (Newell et al.) | Maire Noonan, 2023
2. (Morphology) Lisa Travis coined the term head banging for approaches to wordhood that are predicated on the assumption that words at some level of the derivation must be X⁰s (Baker 1988, Bobaljik 2012, Piggott and Travis 2017, a.o.) | Laura Kalin, 2018

HEAD DIRECTIONALITY
(Syntax) A proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb. Therefore, head initial would be VO languages and head final would be OV languages. (Contemporary Linguistic Parameters 2015)
 Some languages are consistently head-initial or head-final at all phrasal levels. English is considered to be strongly head-initial, while Japanese is an example of a language that is consistently head-final. In certain other languages, such as German and Gbe, examples of both types of head direction occur. Various theories have been proposed to explain such variation.
 Head directionality is connected with the type of branching that predominates in a language: head-initial structures are right-branching, while head-final structures are left-branching (Dryer 2009). On the basis of these criteria, languages can be divided into head-final (rigid and non-rigid) and head-initial types. The identification of headedness is based on the following (Polinsky and Magyar, 2020):

1. The order of subject, object, and verb.
2. The relationship between the order of the object and verb.
3. The order of an adposition and its complement.
4. The order of relative clause and head noun.

HEAD-FINAL, -INITIAL
(Syntax) Head-placement rules deal with the placement of heads of phrases relative to their arguments. The head is what determines how a particular phrasal unit acts within the sentence. Prepositions are the heads of prepositional phrases, verbs the heads of verb phrases, etc.
 Head-initial means that the head is placed before its argument. So you see orders like:

• Verb Object.
• Preposition Noun.
• Noun Genitive.
• Verb Subclause.
• Auxiliary Verb.
• Complementizer Clause.
• Etc. etc.

• Object Verb.
• Noun Postposition.
• Genitive Noun.
• Subclause Verb.
• Verb Auxiliary.
• Clause Complementizer.
• Etc. etc.

1. I saw him [ years ago ].

HEAD MOVEMENT CONSTRAINT

1. (Syntax) I will claim that heads (X⁰s) can only move into the category that governs them. | Lisa deMena Travis, 1984
2. (Syntax) Head movement of X to Y cannot skip an intervening head Z. (Roberts, 2000)
    Z intervenes between Y and X iff Y asymmetrically c-commands both X and Z, while Z asymmetrically c-commands X. The HMC has the effect of forcing head-movement to be cyclic, in an obvious sense. | Ian Roberts, 2015
3. (Syntax) 

   Head Movement Constraint (Travis 1984)
   An X⁰ may only move into the Y⁰ which properly governs it.

    The HMC basically places a limit on the distance over which a head may be moved (head movement). In effect, the HMC prohibits skipping a governing head position, as in (1), where buy moves to COMP in disregard of its being properly governed only by the I₀ will.
   1. * [_CP What [_C buy_i ] [_IP John [ I will ] [_VP t_i ] ] ]?
    Recently, it has been argued that the HMC can be derived from more general principles, such as the ECP. (Baker 1988, Chomsky 1986, Rizzi 1990, Travis 1984) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

HEAD MOVEMENT CONVENTION
(Syntax) The HMC (Travis 1984) is usually understood to constrain head movement to a configuration in which a head moves to the head which selects its maximal projection, e.g, V to T if T selects VP; V to Voice if Voice selects VP.
 Constrained by the HMC, head movement does a good job of characterizing the linear placement of words in a wide variety of languages, e.g., in French V-to-T, Germanic V2 as V-to-C, English finite Aux placement as V-to-T, English subject‐aux inversion as T-to-C, Irish verb-initiality as V-to-T, and so on. | Peter Svenonius, 2023

HEAD MOVEMENT THEORY
(Syntax; Morphology) A grand unification of three things (Emonds 1978, Travis 1984, Baker 1988, Pollock 1989, Belletti 1988):

1. Word-formation. E.g., V to T forms an inflected verb.
2. Word placement in the extended projection. E.g., V to T places V to the left of midfield adverbs.
3. Movement theory. E.g., head movement obeys Relativized Minimality (Rizzi 1990).

HEAD PARAMETER

1. (Morphology; Typology) A language has either right-headed or left-headed compounds. | Geert Booij, 2009
2. (Syntax; Typology) The position of the head is considered to be one of the main parameters of language variation. Opinions differ as to the precise definition of a parametric theory of head positions. There is the possibility to encode the position of the head directly in the X-bar schema of the language. There are also more relational approaches, which derive the position of the head from the direction of case assignment or more abstractly the direction of government.
    Just considering parametric systems which directly manipulate the position of the head, in the simplest case, we can imagine a parameter which takes one of these three values:

   Headedness parameter

   1. The head is phrasal-initial (Head First).
   2. The head is phrasal-final (Head Last).
   3. The position of the head is free (Head Variable).

    The parameter may have different values for different categories (in Dutch for instance VP is head-final, PP usually head-initial and CP always head-initial). Typologists point out that variation of this kind is usually limited because of rather powerful tendencies within languages to harmonize head-complement order across categories. | Jack Hoeksema, 1990

HEADLESS XP
(Syntax) A phrase whose head has moved out of it. E.g.,

          YP
         /  \
        /    \
       /      \
      Y        XP
     / \       /\
    /   \     /  \
   /     \   /____\
  X       Y  ...tX...

1. [_VP t_gave the book to Mary ], John gave t_VP

HEADLESS XP-MOVEMENT
(Syntax) Consider the following derivation. First, a head X⁰ moves to Y⁰ as in (1). Then, the remnant XP moves to a position above Y⁰, as in (2). Under standard conditions of chain pronunciation, the outcome of this derivation is a representation in which a seemingly "headless" XP moves leaving behind its own head X⁰.

1. [_WP W [_YP [_Y X_i Y ] [_XP t_i ZP ] ] ]
2. [_WP [_XPj t_i ZP ] [_W' W [_YP [_Y X_i Y ] t_j ] ]

Takano's Generalization (Takano 2000)
Remnant movement of α is impossible if the head of α has moved out of α.

HERDAN'S LAW
(Diachronic) Although with little-known precedents (Kuraszkiewicz and Łukaszewicz 1951), Herdan's law (Herdan 1960) (also known as Heap's law, because it was also formulated later by Heaps [1978]) describes that the average growth of new different words V in a text of size L follows

V ∼ L^α, α < 1 (Herdan 1960)

HERITAGE ACCENT
(Sociolinguistics) Although most studies dealing with global accent, whether investigating second-language learners (L2s) or heritage speakers, present a dichotomy between native-like vs. foreign-like accent, it is necessary to develop a specific system that includes heritage accent because the speech of heritage speakers presents its own phonetic characteristics. The main problem with this native-like accent/foreign-like accent dichotomy is that first, heritage speakers are hard to place or do not fit at all into it. In addition, it creates a judgement where some speakers and/or language learners belong and others do not belong, no matter how much they may try or develop their proficiency. For instance, in the case of L2s, using this binary classification, highly proficient learners could still not be classified as native-like speakers because of their status as foreign language learners.
 The term was originally proposed by Benmamoun et al. (2010) as an accent different than a native or foreign accent, not only in subjective global accent perceptions but also in phonetic and phonological production and perception measurements. This proposal has, since then, continued to be supported by scholars in the field of heritage language phonetics and phonology (Boomershine and Ronquest 2019, Flores and Rato 2016, Kupisch et al. 2021, Rao 2015, 2018, Ronquest and Rao 2018 a.o.). | Sendy Monarrez Rhone, 2023

HERITAGE LANGUAGE
(Acquisition) An end-state language that is defined based on the temporal order of acquisition and, often, the language dominance in the individual (Valdés 2005). A heritage speaker acquires the heritage language as their first language through natural input in the home environment and acquires the majority language as a second language (Montrul 2008), usually when she/he starts school and talks about different topics with people in school, or by exposure through media (written texts, internet, popular culture etc.) (Benmamoun, Montrul and Polinsky 2010) As exposure to the heritage language decreases and exposure to the majority language increases, the majority language becomes the individual's dominant language, and acquisition of the heritage language changes (Valdés 2005, Montrul 2008). The results of these changes can be seen in divergence of the heritage language from monolingual norms in the areas of phonology, lexical knowledge (knowledge of vocabulary or words), morphology, syntax, semantics and code-switching, although mastery of the heritage language may vary from purely receptive skills in only informal spoken language to native-like fluency (Benmamoun, Montrul and Polinsky 2010). | Wikipedia, 2016

HERITAGE SPEAKER

1. (Sociolinguistics) Little-Jerome (a consultant in Bloomfield 1927) is "a true bilingual;" Little-Doctor has some deficiencies; and White-Thunder is at the low extreme of the bilingualism scale. Little-Doctor and White-Thunder instantiate heritage speakers: unbalanced bilinguals, who are often recessive, with few receptive skills. Their Menominee is less fluent than that of monolingual speakers, and although Bloomfield does not discuss their linguistic biography in detail, it is possible that their paths to lesser fluency were different as well, since they belong to two different generations. Sadly, Little-Doctor may have been ahead of his peers in terms of reduced Menominee fluency. And White-Thunder, the youngest in the cohort described by Bloomfield, may represent the growing trend of moving away from the ancestral language and toward an increased use of English, even if that English may not have been to Bloomfield's standards. | Maria Polinsky, 2018
2. (Sociolinguistics) As Carreira (2004) puts it, we do not have a "size that fits all" when it comes to defining or characterizing heritage speakers—this is why most articles about heritage speakers spend a significant portion of their introductory sections discussing issues concerning the label "heritage speaker" and connotations of that term.
    Valdés (2000) gave this definition: "individuals raised in homes where a language other than English is spoken and who are to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language."
    Roughly, we define heritage speakers as asymmetrical bilinguals who learned language X—the heritage language—as an L1 in childhood, but who, as adults, are dominant in a different language.
    Adopting this or any other definition requires addressing the distinction between heritage speakers in a broad sense and heritage speakers in a narrow sense.
    Defined broadly, as per Fishman (1981, 2006), a heritage speaker is anyone who has an ethnic, cultural, or other connection with a language, regardless of whether that person learned the heritage language as a child. Defined narrowly, a person is a heritage speaker if and only if he or she grew up learning the heritage language and has some proficiency in it. (Polinsky and Kagan 2007) | Elabbas Benmamoun, Silvina Montrul, and Maria Polinsky, 2013

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