In linguistics, Cartographic syntax, or simply Cartography, is a branch of Generative syntax. The basic assumption of Cartographic syntax is that syntactic structures are built according to the same patterns in all languages of the world. It is assumed that all languages exhibit a richly articulated structure of hierarchical projections with specific meanings. Cartography belongs to the tradition of generative grammar and is regarded as a theory belonging to the Principles and Parameters theory. The founders of Cartography are the Italian linguists Luigi Rizzi and Guglielmo Cinque.