Headedness and modification in Functional Discourse Grammar

The notions of head and modifier are two basic tenets of general linguistic theory and play a fundamental role in the view of grammatical structure endorsed by Functional Discourse Grammar. The aim of this paper is to refine the theory’s current approach to headedness and modification, according to which linguistic expressions that lack a head at the semantic or the pragmatic level are not available for any sort of lexical modification. It is argued that this assumption originates from a view of headedness and modification inherited from traditional Functional Grammar, where heads and modifiers were conceived of, respectively, as “first” and “second” restrictors of the variable to which they apply; such an approach, I will suggest, is no longer tenable in the light of the theoretical principles that have meanwhile been introduced in the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar. The main proposal put forth in the paper is that, by shifting to a definition of the head/modifier opposition in terms of 'internal' vs. 'external' specifications of the linguistic units which they serve to qualify, Functional Discourse Grammar becomes perfectly capable of accounting for any possible type of modification of headless pragmatic or semantic units