Nominal group heads and clause structure

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a study of the distribution of nominal group heads across the major elements of clause structure. The distribution of 38 head-nouns was examined, using concordanced data from the University of Birmingham's Cobuild corpora. The results lead to the following observations: i) that nominal group heads, and hence nominal groups, are unevenly distributed across grammatical categories; ii) that a head-noun tends to have a different syntagmatic environment according to the constituent it is realising; iii) that different senses of a noun display different grammatical behaviour; iv) that the syntagmatic patterns in which nominal group heads are involved tend to cut across rank boundaries; and v) that a focus on nouns as the central elements of clauses will reveal the syntagmatic restrictions on some of the most common lexico-grammatical patterns in the language.