(1) (iii) John, Bill, Tom, and several of their friends visited us last night [...] A multiple-branching construction is one with no internal structure. In (1iii), the Subject Noun Phrase is multiple-branching, since "John", "Bill", "Tom", and "several of their friends" are its immediate constituents, and have no further association among themselves. In terms of bracketing, a multiple-branching construction has the form [['A']['B']...['M']].
- Chomsky (1969), a pag.12-13