Talk:Branching (linguistics)

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Contents 1 Restored original content 2 Head-last/first 3 Left branching in Spanish. 4 More languages and classification

[edit] Restored original content

I've just reverted to the original version of the page. The article needs an intro for context, and especially to specify that the noun phrase as defined is an English noun phrase. As for English branching: overwhelming use of prepositions, SVO order and auxiliary-verb order mean it's right-branching. Left-branching only occurs at the noun phrase level and less strictly in the adverb-verb phrase order. --Pablo D. Flores 01:01, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Head-last/first

Before finding this page via Japanese grammar I had never heard of the "branching" nomenclature. Perhaps some mention that "left-branching" and "right-branching" are equivalents to "head-last" and "head-first" would be beneficial.

I think I've fixed it. I've also moved some content to the first paragraph in order to establish the context sooner, otherwise the article takes too much time to get to the point... --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 22:09, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Left branching in Spanish.

Since there seems to be a disagreement here about the occurrence of left branching in Spanish, and edit summaries aren't a great place for explaining positions, let's discuss here.

In Spanish, object personal-pronouns always precede their verbs (lo hago), unless their verbs are infinitives, gerundios, or imperatives (hacerlo, haciéndolo, hazlo). (Objects also precede verbs in certain other contexts, such as in "¿Qué hace?" and "No sé qué hizo", but these aren't really examples of left branching.) Additionally, sometimes an object can be moved forward in order to emphasize it, but I think this is actually an example of left dislocation, and at any rate, saying "Spanish [...] allows direct objects before verbs for emphasis" is misleading because this is not the most common reason for an object to appear before its verb.

Also, "Spanish, which is overwhelmingly right-branching, allows [...] adjectives before nouns for stylistic reasons, although with certain nouns this change in position might suggest different connotations" just seems completely wrong. There's a meaning change, not a stylistic one, in moving an adjective before a noun: it indicates that the adjective is non-restrictive: "ADJETIVO SUSTANTIVO" means "SUSTANTIVO, que es ADJETIVO", while "SUSTANTIVO ADJETIVO" means "SUSTANTIVO que es ADJETIVO". Additionally, with certain adjectives (not nouns!) there's a separate change in meaning when this happens; for example, "SUSTANTIVO grande" means "big NOUN", while "gran SUSTANTIVO" means "wonderful NOUN" (so that both come out meaning "great NOUN", heh), but this is not the most common reason for an adjective to appear before its noun. (It is a genuine example of left branching, so I'm not opposed to mentioning it, but the current phrasing is misleading both in its description of it, and in making it sound like it's the most common reason for an adjective to precede its noun.)

(Disclaimer: I'm not a native, or even particularly good, Spanish speaker, but I'm fairly certain I know what I'm talking about here.)

Ruakh 05:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More languages and classification

I'd like to see the branching tendancies of more languages and language families be talked about, for example, the insular celtic, semitic, and sino-tibetan languages. The only problem is classification, since a lot of languages seem to be shifting from one to the other (mostly left to right). Is there any language which is as rigidly right-branching as japanese is left? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bob A (talk • contribs) .

Hmm. Hebrew is generally SVO (or VO — though this is fairly flexible anyway), it uses prepositions almost exclusively (including a number of prepositional prefixes, while I can only think of one postpositional suffix), and it puts nouns before adjectives (and often before determiners, even), so I guess it's fairly consistently right-branching. (comment continues below)

True, but it still has some postfix inflection, which i believe is left branching. Bob A

Are you saying that given an inflected word, the inflection is the head and the rest is the dependent? Ruakh 17:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes; it seems that way to me. For example, in french, plural nouns are indicated by the prepositions les and des. and tense/aspect is indicated by the words for have and go. I'm not sure, though. Bob A 19:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

That said, I'm not sure how much it would contribute to the article to discuss the branching tendencies of so many different languages; I think it would be more interesting to discuss wider trends, such as how well SVO/VSO-ness correlates with prepositionality, how well each of them correlates with noun-adjective word order, and so on. (I'm sure such research must exist, as it seems necessary to even justify the existence of the terms right- and left-branching.)

Ruakh 21:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)