right-branching

[ rahyt-bran-ching, -brahn- ]

adjective

, Linguistics.

1. (of a grammatical construction) characterized by greater structural complexity in the position following the head, as the phrase the house of the friend of my brother; having most of the constituents on the right in a tree diagram ( left-branching ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of right-branching¹

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

A preference for what American linguists call “right-branching” sentences eases the cognitive load.

From The Guardian

Even when the sentence structure gets more complicated, a reader can handle the tree, because its geometry is mostly right-branching.

From Literature

In a right-branching tree, the most complicated phrase inside a bigger phrase comes at the end of it, that is, hanging from the rightmost branch.

From Literature

The following twenty-five-word phrase is splayed along a diagonal axis, indicating that it is almost entirely right-branching: flattish trees, each composed of simpler phrases joined side by side.

From Literature

These front-loaded modifiers can be useful in qualifying a sentence, in tying it to information mentioned earlier, or simply in avoiding the monotony of having one right-branching sentence after another.

From Literature