Tendencies
As stated above, the main branching trait for a given language is just a tendency and it often shows exceptions. Spanish, for example, while overwhelmingly right-branching, puts numeral modifiers before nouns and, in certain cases, objects before verbs. Languages like English and German - though regarded as being right-branching because the main verbs precede direct objects - place adjectives and numerals before their nouns. Japanese and most other languages of northeastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent, on the other hand, are practically a model for rigidly left-branching languages. The Mon–Khmer and Austronesian languages of southeast Asia and many African languages come close to rigidly right-branching, with numerals as well as adjectives following their nouns and degree words like very, too, extremely, and quite following the adjectives they modify.
Read more about this topic: Branching (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the word tendencies:
“There are two tendencies in all our war talk.... The first is to boast, if not of ourselves and our deeds, at least of our army, our corps, our regiments. The other is to find fault with, to criticize, to censure, to condemn others. If there is a victory, we gained it and must have the credit of it. If there is a failure, it was the fault of the other fellow,—he must be blamed for it.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts—not to give it joy, but to give it a grand and somewhat gaudy sense of virtue. The essay is a weapon against the degenerate tendencies of the age. The novel, properly conceived, is a means of uplifting the spirit; its aim is to inspire, not merely to satisfy the low curiosity of man in man.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)