A head is the word around which a phrase is constructed. A head can be a noun, adjective, verb, or preposition.
A complement is a phrase that’s needed to complete the meaning of a word. Complements give more information about the head of the sentence.
Ex. In the sentence, the child devoured the sandwich, ‘the sandwich’ is the complement and gives more information about what the child devoured.
A specifier occurs at the edge of a phrase and may be a determiner, a degree word or preverbial adverb.
English determiner examples: the, a, some, this, those
English degree words examples: very, quite, more, almost
English preverbial adverb examples: never, perhaps, often, always
In Sairupanese, sentence structure is head-initial which means the head of the word comes before the complement. The complement appears on the right and the specifier appears on the left. The following sentences demonstrate sentence structure in this language:
Mĩŋ Saɾupɑ̃ŋĩs o larp ʎɑlo təmãbat
Direct translation: I Sairupanese in linguistics class study.
We can see that the complement "o larp ʎɑlo" follows the head "Saɾupɑ̃ŋĩs".
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