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THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 66
symbol or a category’, that is, that a feature such as Case can have a value such
as [accusative]. Similar extensions of feature theory are found in A-Morphous
Morphology, for example. Binarity, to judge by the way that it is currently used
by linguists in features, is all very well, but it is certainly not universal.
Tree structure
In the meantime, tree structure has been moving in precisely the opposite
direction, away from multiply branching trees towards binary-branching.
Scalise (1984) introduces what he terms the Binary Branching Hypothesis with
respect to morphological trees, and argues that such a restriction can be
justified in that domain.
In syntax, a restriction to binary branching can be seen as being implicit in
X-bar theory (though Chomsky 1970, probably the location of the introduction
of X-bar into Chomskyan linguistics, does not use binary-branching
trees). It was generally adopted following Kayne (1984). Although Kayne
introduces the notion of binary branching for technical reasons, it seems to
have been welcomed as a principled constraint on the format of trees. Binary
branching appears to fail in the case of coordination but only there (see also
Wells 1957 [1947]). We might wonder, however, how principled the limitation
is if it fails at all.
Interestingly, a restriction to binarily branching trees has been resisted in
phonology. Not only have widely supported suggestions that the syllable might
have a binarily branching structure like that in (3) been fiercely debated, but
arguments for structuring consonant sequences (such as those that arise in both
the onset and the coda of strengths) seem remarkably weak in models which look
for constituent structure, with the result that a ‘flat’ tree like that in (4) might
be preferred. (Dependency Phonology uses sonority as a guide to headedness,
and is able to assign heads to these clusters; but the arguments for some of them
Syllable
Onset Rhyme
Peak Coda
b e
Syllable
t
s t r e ŋ � s