PRE-DEICTICS

In one of the above examples we saw an instance of the partitive form which uses the preposition "of" and precedes the deictic.
e.g. Have some of my tobacco.
These are known as PRE-DEICTICS, and are also governed by the rule of countable/uncountable concordance with the headword.
e.g.	Have another of my cigarettes.
	Have some of this wine.
Pre-deictics may be general quantifiers such as "all", "each", "many" etc, numerals, words which indicate multiples or fractions, such as "double", "one half" etc, and also certain nominal group quantifiers such as "a little", "a few", "a great deal" etc. The words "such" and "what" may also appear in this capacity preceding the indefinite article or zero article.
e.g. It is such a big house.
Note that some of the partitives require "of" before the deictic. It is also important to note that where there is number agreement between subject and verb, then this is governed by the pre-deictic element if one is present in the subject nominal group.
e.g.	All of the boys were late.
	Each of the boys was punished.
Note that if the pre-deictic is a singular form, such as "each" in the above example, verb agreement is singlular even though the headword "boys" is plural.
Consider the following example with the pronoun "one":-
e.g. One of the boys was late.

It is possible with structures such as this to show two structural interpretations: the first where "one" is the headword and the second where it is pre-deictic.
(i)	One	of the boys	was late
	h	---- q ----

(ii)	One of	the	boys	was late
	--pd--	d	h

The argument for preferring interpretation (ii) is supported by the fact that we could also say:-
e.g. One boy was late.
Similarly for "some":-
e.g.	Some boys were late.
	Some of the boys were late.
Although grammarians may disagree as to which interpretation is to be preferred, for our purposes it is sufficient to note that both viewpoints are possible. There are also a number of nominal group quantifiers which precede uncountable nouns and which are similarly susceptible to this dual analysis.
e.g. A bottle of Aunt Martha's fine old vintage port.
This is of course the standard means of quantifying uncountable nouns such as "milk", "tea", "coffee" etc. However, this structure has its own characteristic forms since the words such as "cup", "bottle", "glass" and so on which serve as the quantifiers are themselves nouns, and may be modified accordingly.
e.g. A large bottle of aunt Martha's fine old vintage port.
Clearly we can view "bottle" as the headword, and the whole prepositional group which follows "of" as a rankshifted qualifier. However, the alternative analysis is also possible, and the pre-deictic element is then "a large bottle of". If we choose the pre-deictic classification, the structure of the whole group is thus as follows:-

a large bottle of	Aunt Martha's	fine	old	vintage	port
------ pd -------	----- d -----	m	m	m	h

A further argument in support of this analysis is the fact that other adjectives which are semantically linked with the main headword may anticipate it and be placed in the pre-deictic group:-
e.g. a tasty bottle of Aunt Martha's fine old vintage port
Structurally this might look at first sight as if the headword for the whole structure was "bottle", and the post-positional group "of Aunt Martha's fine old vintage port" was acting as qualifier. However, it can also be argued that "bottle" is a quantifying modifier for "port", and not the "port" which modifies the "bottle", and it is of course the port which is tasty, not the bottle. Thus we could not say:-
e.g.	û a tasty port bottle û
	û a delicious coffee cup û
This anticipatory placing of such adjectives in the pre-deictic group is especially common with certain expressions, and seems to arise from the habitual association of words like "cup" with words such as "tea" and "coffee", so that expressions like "cup of tea" are treated as if they were compound structures forming a single unit. These are not in fact compound structures, but are COLLOCATIONS - words which are regularly found in combination. Some common collocations of this type include:-
puff of smoke, pack of cards, pair of boots, layer of dust, pool of water, gust of wind, stack of books, pile of papers, jar of honey
Expressions of this type can also be seen to possess a similar structural ambiguity to that discussed above.
e.g.	a new pair of shoes
	a pair of new shoes
As well as these miscellaneous quantifying expressions there are also the various "facet" words such as "front", "face", "back", "rear", "side" etc. These frequently form complex prepositional phrases such as "in front of", "at the back of" and so on, and again two structural interpretations are possible:-
In the first interpretation, "back" is treated as headword and the prepositional group "of the house" is qualifier. In the second interpretation, "house" is headword and "the back of" serves as the pre-deictic element.