16 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR.
before the subject, and as (7b) shows, this is in fact ungrammatical. The
explanation for this is that smalinn "the shepherd" is in the LDP outside of
the clause; accordingly, even though the finite verb is not in second position
in the sentence, it is in the correct position within the clause. The structure
of (7a) is given in Figure 6.^8 These Icelandic facts are readily explicable in
terms of two related contrasts: one between sentence and clause, on the
one hand, and one between LDP and PCS, on the other.
1.6 Clause structure in dependent-marking and head-marking languagesNichols (1986) proposes a fundamental typological contrast with respect to
the way the syntactic relationship between a head and its dependents is
morphologically signalled. In languages like English, Japanese and Icelan
dic, the relationship between a verb and the argument(s) it governs is indi
cated on the dependent arguments in the form of case or adpositional mark
ing. In Tzotzil, on the other hand, this relationship is marked on the head,
the verb; in (4a) there is no marking on the dependent NPs to indicate their
relationship with respect to the verb, but the verb, the governing head, car
ries morphemes which indicate the person and number of its arguments.
Nichols labels languages in which the first pattern predominates (e.g. Eng
lish and Japanese) dependent-marking languages and those in which the sec
ond pattern is primary (e.g. Tzotzil) head-marking languages.