Empty Heads

Recently, in my syntax class we have been studying empty heads. How cool is that?! And how useful?! (okay, we're not really going to get into that second question.) But I think it's pretty cool that I can tell people, "oh yeah, today, in linguistics I studied about empty heads." This is probably followed by a blank look, a good laugh, or a question that goes something along the lines of "Can you actually make any money with a degree in linguistics?" (The answer is definitely yes, although like most professions you should probably have a masters degree as well... that's a topic for another post.)



An empty head might not be as cool once I actually tell you about it, but basically (and VERY basically), in linguistics an empty head is something that needs to be in a place (such as in a specific part of a sentence to make it grammatical) but that you can't see in that place--because it is visible in another location in the sentence. It's called empty because it's there, but it has no phonological content (sound), and no visible manifestation. And most people don't realize that it's there. But it's really how we all process language, specifically syntax and the grammar of sentence formation! You do it to!!!