Re: Branching typologies [was: Re: "easiest" languages, SE Asian word-order typologies]

From: "Thomas R. Wier"

> Take, for
> example a sentence like (1):
> (1) John met the man.
In Géarthnuns:

Íöhans lé chö dhaubsöt akaz.
John-nom past-aux the man-acc meet.for.the.first.time

> But expand that sentence and look
> again:
> (2) John met the man in the hall that had been handing out fliers
>     about the upcoming game.
It's ambiguous in English what took place in the hall. If the meeting of the
man happened in the hall, it's this:

Íöhans lé chö dhaubsöt, chöb löi söik dvérhaksöich chí ebrüíönselsíb
thauthílölíb ésh fölröz sho, chöi pauretsöiv akaz.

Íöhans lé chö dhaubsöt, chöb löi
I-nom past-aux the man-acc, who-nom pluperfect-aux

söik dvérhaksöich chí ebrüíönselsíb thauthílölíb
some flyer-acc/pl the game-postpositional coming-post

 ésh fölröz sho, chöi pauretsöiv akaz.
 about hand.out SHO, the hall-locative meet.for.the.first.time

If the handing out of flyers took place in the hall, then it's this:

Íöhans lé chö dhaubsöt, chöb löi söik dvérhaksöich chí ebrüíönselsíb
thauthílölíb ésh chöi pauretsöiv fölröz sho, akaz.

Íöhans lé chö dhaubsöt, chöb löi
I-nom past-aux the man-acc, who-nom pluperfect-aux

söik dvérhaksöich chí ebrüíönselsíb thauthílölíb
some flyer-acc/pl the game-postpositional coming-post

 ésh chöi pauretsöiv fölröz sho, akaz.
 about the hall-locative hand.out SHO, meet.for.the.first.time

If *both* took place in the hall, I think I'd opt for the second.

> Here, clearly, the verb phrase is tending to branch off to the right,
> since the PP "in the hall" and the relative clause both follow the
> the verb just like the complement NP, "the man".  Most languages aren't
> entirely consistent in this respect: within an NP like "a big red
balloon",
> the head of the NP, "balloon", is to the right of its complementizers,
> which branch off to the left of it.  But indeed, this is a peculiarity
> of English:
and the other Germanic languages

> in most languages that have SVO order (like English), the
> adjectives and other modifiers usually follow the noun, branching off
> the right.
Chinese a notable exception. Left-branching to die from.

> That, at least, is how I understand the situation.  I may > be wrong on
many points here.

This seems to fall under some of those "universals". SOV's are typically
supposed to be left-branching if I understand correctly, and Japanese
follows that pattern. Géarthnuns breaks this one. SVO's are supposed to be
right-branching and we've already claimed some notable exceptions here in
certain sentence constructs.

Your definition is kinda what I was thinking, but in another post, Dirk
throws in a new wrinkle. I'll leave it to the linguist to determine what the
terms really mean :) "Til then, I'm still guessing that Géarthnuns is still
right-branching.

Kou