Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
In recent years the study of phrase structure has largely become a search for principles, parameters and other mechanisms to replace phrase-structure rules of the traditional sort. For capturing word order, one of the most common devices is the directionality parameter, especially the one which specifies a language as head-final or head-initial. It has also been proposed that languages may be specified for the direction of government (Stowell, 1981), or direction of Case- and theta-role assignment (Koopman, 1983; Travis, 1984). Often, such proposals focus only on the lowest (X′) level of phrase structure, that is to say the ordering of complements with relation to a head, but there have also been suggestions for directionality of specifiers or adjuncts (as in Ernst, 1989; Georgopoulos, 1991).