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I have a case in which the head of a noun phrase can be omitted.

the taller girl of the two girls

First of all, can I consider taller a new head or should I only notice that the head is omitted (when translated into another language, the translator still has to use an equivalent and he has to write some note). I have read in some book a researcher considers taller a new head but I forgot.

Secondly, is this possible if I remove the second noun girls so we have:

the taller of the two

Or may I delete only girls:

the taller girl of the two

If yes, either case above, there will be no head?

Hồ Quang Trung
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  • They do have heads, and it's nothing to do with ellipsis. In "The taller of the two girls", the adjective "taller" is a fused modifier-head. It serves as head and as modifier at the same time. We understand it to mean "taller girl". In "the taller of the two", "two" is a fused determiner-head. – BillJ Jul 30 '17 at 18:29
  • Huddleston & Pullum's 'A Student's Introduction' is excellent. I can also particularly recommend the award-winning 'The Cambridge Grammar Of The English Language' (CGEL), by the same authors. There are a few references to it on the 'Net. Here's one: link In my opinion, the fused-head analysis is far better than anything X-Bar can come up with. – BillJ Aug 01 '17 at 07:14

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Part of this, the part about what can be omitted, is definitely an English grammar question. You can omit either or both of the nouns in this construct. So all of these are grammatical:

the taller girl of the two

the taller of the two girls

the taller of the two (NOTE: This one is grammatical only if the girls are a salient topic, meaning they have already been mentioned earlier in the sentence or paragraph.)

The rest is more of a linguistics question, but in most X-bar theories (ones that refer to Phrases with Heads), all of these structures would omit the head rather than promoting "taller" or "two" to be the heads of their phrases. In some frameworks, this may not be the case. One big topic in syntax today involves proposing alternatives to and derivatives of X-bar theories and arguing for why those alternatives may be better. For this reason there can't be an accepted, universal answer to the question of phrase heads and promotion because there's no one perfect theory that we can use to answer the question. It's possible that X-bar is wrong and "taller" and/or "two" do get promoted, or it's possible that phrases and heads aren't optimal strategies for syntactic analysis, but it's outside the scope of this question and this forum to analyze this any further.

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Patrick Keenan
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  • I'll just add that when diagramming these sentences, some might choose to put a symbol in representing the absent head (to show where it WOULD go if it were present). – MAA Jul 30 '17 at 16:05
  • Yes thanks! I'm not good with syntax here so if you have suggestions about depicting that, or a site/thread to link to instead, I'm open to suggestions. – Patrick Keenan Jul 30 '17 at 16:17
  • OP certainly needs to be made aware of the different approaches ('alternatives to and derivatives of X-bar theories') that exist (and the fact that more are doubtless going to exist); people often arrive on ELU assuming that everything is done and dusted (if not easy to fully understand). A link to an article examining some of these different approaches would be very useful. // Chomsky's famous 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously' is always claimed to be grammatical but usually claimed to be unacceptable as being nonsense. Isn't an uncontextualised 'the taller of the two' in the same camp? – Edwin Ashworth Jul 30 '17 at 16:33
  • In "the taller of the two", the adjective "taller" is a fused modifier-head. It serves as head and as modifier at the same time. We understand it to mean "taller girl". In "the taller of the two", "two" is a fused determiner-head. – BillJ Jul 30 '17 at 18:26
  • @BillJ the point is that this is just one view. It is not "correct" universally, merely correct within the framework in which you're analyzing syntax. In standard X-Bar theories these are headless with a "trace" element. Here's an example: https://books.google.com/books?id=m06SA-28GmcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false – Patrick Keenan Jul 31 '17 at 04:26
  • Which only goes to show the weakness of X-Bar!. Unlike X-Bar, which merely produces endless debate, the fused-head approach gives a simple, logical and easy to understand answer. It is quite widely accepted. – BillJ Jul 31 '17 at 05:37
  • @BillJ You do get that I'm not advocating for X-Bar but pointing out that you aren't sharing objective truths but relative truths, yes? That this isn't a debate about which theory is more powerful but a reminder that your initial comment had no objective truth content? If you make a claim like the one you made, you need to simultaneously state the framework within which you've made the analysis or it's a meaningless claim. – Patrick Keenan Jul 31 '17 at 05:42
  • The framework is, of course, that used by H&P in their CGEL. Have you read it? – BillJ Jul 31 '17 at 05:44
  • @BillJ I am not interested in continuing a theoretical syntax discussion in the comments section of a question likely asked by a non-native speaker seeking clarification on English grammar. This is an inappropriate setting for such a discussion as it will only serve to confuse anyone who came here to learn about English grammar. If this was the linguistics stackexchange I'd be happy to continue but this unfortunately is not. – Patrick Keenan Jul 31 '17 at 05:47
  • In my opinion, more non-native speakers study about English issues than native ones. I am still new to this field. – Hồ Quang Trung Jul 31 '17 at 22:40
  • @BillJ I have found a source stating about fused-head construction but I still need more. Can you suggest me another book? The one I found is A Student's Introduction to English Grammar by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum. – Hồ Quang Trung Jul 31 '17 at 23:16
  • I heard about X-Bar theories a lot of times but I still haven't studied about it. – Hồ Quang Trung Jul 31 '17 at 23:19