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. Other languages such as
Japanese and
Turkish are strongly left-branching (head-final).