A syntactic head is the element treated as central to a construction under a specified structural analysis. It can determine grammatical properties or which other elements may occur. Headedness therefore concerns relationships within a construction, beyond which word seems most informative in the conversation.[ref]
Head in the SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms. Definition and Discussion, agreement and occurrence of other constituents
In a conventional noun-headed analysis of
the small boxes, boxes heads the noun phrase. The head's plural grammatical number helps explain the grammatical agreement in The small boxes are ready. Changing small to heavy changes the description without changing that number requirement.In a dependency representation, a head also provides the attachment point for syntactic dependencies. A reproducible analysis states its conventions: different grammatical frameworks can choose different heads for some constructions. The success of a representation depends on the patterns it explains and predicts, not solely on whether its links form a mechanically valid rooted tree.
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