Head (linguistics)

About: Head (linguistics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2540 publications have been published within this topic receiving 29023 citations. The topic is also known as: nucleus.

A contrastive analysis of english and sundanese two root noun phrase constructions

Abstract: The arbitrariness causes the variety of language spoken in the world. There are many languages in the world and every language contains different set of rules and discrete linguistic units. It means language has arbitrariness in grammatical system too. People will have some problems when they learn it. The majority of a learner’s problem in producing foreign language, especially in the beginning levels, starts from the learner’s assumption that the target language operates like the native language. The study was a qualitative research. The data of the study were two root noun phrases taken by using random sampling from two different magazines; ‘Forbes Asia’ English magazine (published in November 2016) and ‘Mangle’ Sundanese magazine (published in December 2016). The data were analyzed using contrastive analysis in order to achieve the purpose of the study, i.e. to describe English and Sundanese noun phrases construction and to explain the similarities and the differences between English and Sundanese noun phrases construction. The findings show that there are fourteen patterns of English noun phrase based on its class of elements. On the other hand, there are eleven pattern of Sundanese noun phrase. There are only four same patterns in both English and Sundanese noun phrases. The construction type and modifier position of those patterns are exactly same both in English and Sundanese. There are two differences between English and Sundanese noun phrase constructions. First, some noun phrase constructions do not exist in Sundanese and only found in English. Second, the noun phrase construction exists in both languages, but with different modifier positions. For example, the pronoun in noun phrase of English and Sundanese with two elements ‘Noun and Pronoun’ is as a modifier of the noun, but the position of pronoun is different. In English the modifier (pronoun) comes before the head (noun) with ‘pn + N’ pattern, while in Sundanese the modifier (pronoun) comes after the head (noun) with ‘N + pn’ pattern. The result will hopefully be used by the teacher as a reference in teaching phrases of English or Sundanese. It helps the teacher in choosing how to teach the materials to the students in learning process, so the teacher will teach them in a better way.

The High Political Costs in Local Head Election (Case Study in Indonesia)

Abstract: The most crucial issue of money politics in the election is the high cost of contestation borne by candidates in the election process. The study's objective is to analyze the causes of high political costs in regional head elections in Indonesia and the steps to reform the regional election system in the future. The study used a qualitative-descriptive method with a desk study technique, namely examining data sourced from literature and regulations and those related to the elections. The study found that political costs are high in regional head elections because, first, oligarchs control political parties because of the party's power to recruit candidates. In practice, recruiting candidates by political parties and coalitions of political parties are closed, elitist, and undemocratic. Party elites or oligarchs have the power to select and determine candidate pairs to fight in the regional elections. The nomination of candidates is not an arena for contesting capacities and capabilities, but rather an arena for capital struggle, popularity, and closeness to oligarchs or political party elites. Second, there are loopholes in regulations that open up space for high-cost politics, namely (1) a centralized nominating system; (2) Requirements for nomination at the political party level are too high and (3) The requirements for nomination by independent candidates are too stringent. The steps to improve the election system are to enhance the legal framework of the elections, namely institutionalizing the pre-election process, decentralizing the authority of political parties' management, reducing the parliamentary threshold for both parties and independent candidates.

Structural Ambiguity in the Noun Phrase

Abstract: The term ambiguity refers to the multiple meaning of a given utterance. Most commonly this is a double meaning, as in this sign on an Iowa dancehall: 1. clean and decent dancing every night except Monday. There are two kinds of ambiguity that must be distinguished, lexical and structural. In lexical ambiguity the double meaning derives from the meanings of the words themselves. Here is an example from a piece of advice to newlyweds: 2. When she washes the dishes, he should wash the dishes with her. When she mops up the floor, he should mop up the floor with her. Structural ambiguity, on the other hand, stems from the grammar of English, frequently from the arrangement of words and structures or from the grammatical classification of words. The next example shows a structural ambiguity caused by the arrangement: 3. At the commencement exercise, the Johnsons watched their grandson cross the platform proudly. The arrangement permits proudly to modify either watched or cross. Structural ambiguity resulting from grammatical classification is illustrated in this sentence: 4. Twenty faculty members have earned degrees. Here have earned can be classified as either auxiliary + verb or as verb + adjectival; thus two readings are produced. In what follows, I am going to limit the treatment of structural ambiguity in the noun phrase to the written language, for the dangers of ambiguity are much greater in writing than in speaking. In speaking, vocal signals such as stress, pitch, and juncture give very effective control over meaning, as an English professor once forgot when he announced to his Chaucer class: 5. Tomorrow we are going to examine the Wife of Bath's Tale. But in writing there is no living voice to control the meaning signals, and the writer must depend on the written form alone--arrangement, word choice, word form, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization-to keep the reader on the rails. These are slender means and, as we shall soon see, the opportunities for ambiguity in the written language are rife. Now, let us go to work on the noun phrase. The noun phrase consists of a noun head and its modifiers, fore and aft, and we shall examine a number of ambigual grammatical structures containing prenominal or postnominal modifiers. There are over fifty of these ambigual structures in the noun phrase, so we shall be able to consider only a sampling.