The Silence of Heads

Abstract On the basis of considerations involving complementizers, sentence-final particles, need, aspect, tense, focus and topic, agreement morphemes, determiners, verbrelated particles and adpositions, I reach the conclusion that many more heads in the sentential projection line (and elsewhere) must be taken to be silent than is usually thought. I then argue that this state of affairs ultimately reflects the fact that every projecting head is silent. 提要 本文探討的對象包括標句詞、句末助詞、“need”、體、時、焦點與話題、一致關係 語素、限定詞、與動詞有關的助詞、介詞，得出的結論是：在句子投射系列及其他 位置上，無聲中心語的數目應該遠多於過去所理解。本文進而指出，以上的情況都 說明一個事實，那就是中心語都是無聲的成分。