Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Karwan Othman ¹
• Jalal Hassan ²

¹ English Department, College of Education and Language, Charmo University, Chamchamal, Iraq

² Department of English Language, College of Education, Garmian University, Kurdistan Region – Iraq

Abstract

The issue of head-position has been a controversial and disputed subject within the generative syntax. The purpose of the current study is to determine the right position of head in English and Central Kurdish (CK) noun phrases with regard to optional and mandatory elements and specify the type of the elements that can modify or determine the head nouns and demonstrate the different and similar points between the two languages concerning the position of the head through a comparative study. The study hypothesizes that in both languages, the heads occur before their complements which is head-initial. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that CK at the level to its noun phrases seems to stick firmly to head-initial parameter as the complements consistently occur on the right of their heads, whereas in English noun phrases although in most cases the complements occur on the right of their heads, but the modifiers mostly precede the head nouns.

Keywords

• Head
• complement
• head-initial
• modifier
• adjunct