In this paper dedicated to Hudson, we discuss the criteria used to define the dependency structure and to characterize the syntactic head of every syntactic unit. Hudson was the first one, in the 1980s, to really try to justify his choices of analysis in dependency syntax by using both distributional criteria with and without removal, but he never stated them in black and white. This paper is an attempt to propose distributional criteria for choosing a syntactic head and proving the head status of words that can generally not stand alone, such as determiners, prepositions, or auxiliaries. Three criteria are stated – a Positive and a Negative distributional criterion with removal and a Distributional criterion without removal – as well as a Distributional criterion for the head of a sentence. These criteria are compared to criteria used in Garde (), Hudson (, ), and Mel’čuk (), showing that Mel’čuk circumvented them in practice, while Hudson applied them quite systematically but never really stated them clearly.

Chapter 4 analyzes gender and number agreement processes within the Determiner Phrase (DP) of Yungueño Spanish, Chota Valley Spanish and Chincha Spanish. The data presented here show a variety of reduced agreement configurations, which are rooted in L2 processing constraints applying at the morphology–semantics interface. A unified account of these phenomena is provided by adopting current formal proposals on the nature of feature valuation and checking (Frampton & Gutmann 2000; Pesetsky & Torrego 2007). In so doing, this chapter enhances a stronger dialogue between syntactic theory and variationist analysis, which is fundamental to account for the nature and evolution of the agreement domain across the DP of these Afro-Hispanic dialects.