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Should't it be "monodirectionality hypothesis"?

In my understanding, this is about the one-way that material/structure can be added to a sentence-while-generated, but never deleted. (Harley 2013 cites, next to this Monotonicity H. of Koontz-Garboden, Emonds' Structure Preserving Hypothesis)

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    Are you asking why the technical term is called "monotonicity?
    – user6726
    Apr 27, 2016 at 15:54
  • yes exactly that is what I question
    – purlupar
    Apr 27, 2016 at 16:11
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    It’s an established term that means precisely that.
    – Jeremy Needle
    Apr 27, 2016 at 16:18
  • Do you have any idea who first coined the term? Mathematics seems to eschew historical references to first uses of terms.
    – user6726
    Apr 28, 2016 at 0:24
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    Lexical-functional grammar has a similar concept. In mathematics, if a function is monotonic on some interval (a, b), it means that either f(c) >= f(d) for all c, d OR or f(c) <= f(d) for all c, d in the interval (a, b) with c > d. Linguistics takes this concept but discards the second statement in the disjunction (f(c) <= f(d)).
    – WavesWashSands
    Apr 28, 2016 at 3:22

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