Branching (linguistics)

In linguistics, branching refers to the shape of the parse trees that represent the structure of sentences. Assuming that the language is being written or transcribed from left to right, parse trees that grow down and to the right are right-branching, and parse trees that grow down and to the left are left-branching. The direction of branching reflects the position of heads in phrases, and in this regard, right-branching structures are head-initial, whereas left-branching structures are head-final. English has both right-branching (head-initial) and left-branching (head-final) structures, although it is more right-branching than left-branching. Some languages such as Japanese and Turkish are almost fully left-branching (head-final). Some languages are mostly right-branching (head-initial). Languages typically construct phrases with a head word (or nucleus) and zero or more dependents (modifiers). The following phrases show the phrase heads in bold. Examples of left-branching phrases (= head-final phrases): the house - Noun phrase (NP) very happy - Adjective phrase (AP) too slowly - Adverb phrase (AdvP) Examples of right-branching phrases (= head-initial phrases): laugh loudly - Verb phrase (VP) with luck - Prepositional phrase (PP) that it happened - Subordinator phrase (SP = subordinate clause) Examples of phrases that contain both left- and right-branching (= head-medial phrases): the house there - Noun phrase (NP) very happy with it - Adjective phrase (AP) only laugh loudly - Verb phrase (VP) Concerning phrases such as the house and the house there, this article assumes the traditional NP analysis, meaning that the noun is deemed to be head over the determiner. On a DP-analysis (determiner phrase), the phrase the house would be right-branching instead of left-branching. Left- and right-branching structures are illustrated with the trees that follow. Each example appears twice, once according to a constituency-based analysis associated with a phrase structure grammar and once according to a dependency-based analysis associated with a dependency grammar.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (4)

Related concepts (13)

The influence of chemical composition, aerosol acidity, and metal dissolution on the oxidative potential of fine particulate matter and redox potential of the lung lining fluid

Athanasios Nenes, Andrea Mario Arangio

Air pollution is a major environmental health risk and it contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and excess mortality worldwide. The adverse health effects have been associated with the inhalation of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and indu ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

Implicit discourse relation classification with syntax-aware contextualized word representations

James Henderson

Automatically identifying implicit discourse relations requires an in-depth semantic understanding of the text fragments involved in such relations. While early work investigated the usefulness of different classes of input features, current state-of-the-a ...

2019

Grammar-based generation of equilibrium structures through graphic statics

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

This paper proposes a grammar-based structural design methodology using graphic statics. By combining shape grammars with graphic statics, this method enables the designer to: 1) rapidly generate unique, yet functional structures that fall outside of the e ...

IASS2015

Head-directionality parameter

In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb. Therefore, head initial would be "VO" languages and head final would be "OV" languages. Some languages are consistently head-initial or head-final at all phrasal levels.

Merge (linguistics)

Merge (usually capitalized) is one of the basic operations in the Minimalist Program, a leading approach to generative syntax, when two syntactic objects are combined to form a new syntactic unit (a set). Merge also has the property of recursion in that it may apply to its own output: the objects combined by Merge are either lexical items or sets that were themselves formed by Merge. This recursive property of Merge has been claimed to be a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes language from other cognitive faculties.

Catena (linguistics)

In linguistics, a catena (English pronunciation: kəˈtiːnə, plural catenas or catenae; from Latin for "chain") is a unit of syntax and morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars. It is a more flexible and inclusive unit than the constituent and its proponents therefore consider it to be better suited than the constituent to serve as the fundamental unit of syntactic and morphosyntactic analysis. The catena has served as the basis for the analysis of a number of phenomena of syntax, such as idiosyncratic meaning, ellipsis mechanisms (e.