Kim, Dong-ok 1997 A Study on the Headless Endocentric Structure in English, Linguistics, 5-1, 1-29 The X¨-theory is based on the endocentricity principle that all the phrases have their head But we often find out headless phrases such as the poor, th...
Kim, Dong-ok 1997 A Study on the Headless Endocentric Structure in English, Linguistics, 5-1, 1-29 The X¨-theory is based on the endocentricity principle that all the phrases have their head But we often find out headless phrases such as the poor, the British and the sublime, which have no phonetic matrix immediately dominated by node N This study aims to survey the some headless phrases, to introduce the previous debates on such endocentric structures, and to provide adequate accounts for their generation In section 1 we define the headless endocentric structure and state the necessity of this study In section 2 we introduce the various analyses on the headless phrases and present the examples as many as possible from the headless CP, the headless NP, the headless PP and some other headless phrases In section 3 we test three hypotheses on the derivation of the headless phrases (namely, deletion hypothesis, gap hypothesis and empty category hypothesis) on the basis of Case-marking and thematic role assigning theories In section 4 we sum up and conclude this study. (Kwangju University)