In certain theories of

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

, an R-expression (short for ''referring expression'') is a category in the three-way classification of

noun phrases In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occ ...

in binding theory, the other two being anaphors and

pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

s. According to

principle C In linguistics, binding is the phenomenon in which anaphora (linguistics), anaphoric elements such as pronouns are grammatically associated with their Antecedent (grammar), antecedents. For instance in the English sentence "Mary saw herself", the a ...

of binding theory, R-expressions must be free. R-expressions include names (e.g. Mary, John) and definite DPs (e.g. the cat). In

Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

government and binding theory A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

, an R-expression is an overt NP analysed as

a. -p A is the first letter of the Latin and English alphabet. A may also refer to: Science and technology Quantities and units * ''a'', a measure for the attraction between particles in the Van der Waals equation * A value, ''A'' value, a mea ...

(not anaphor and not pronominal), and hence subject only to Principle C of the Binding Theory, namely, that it be free (unbound) in all domains. Examples of typical R-expressions are "Lisa", "the dog", "my pet unicorn", "the last chapter of the book", and "Janel's cigarettes". The name is derived from the phrase ''

referring expression In linguistics, a referring expression (RE) is any noun phrase, or surrogate for a noun phrase, whose function in discourse is to identify some individual object. The technical terminology for ''identify'' differs a great deal from one school of ...

'', used in semantics for the largest class of NPs, but the GB usage is not synonymous with the semantic sense.

R. L. Trask Robert Lawrence Trask (10 November 1944 – 27 March 2004) was an American–British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics. Biography Born in Ol ...

; A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics

References

{{Formal semantics Generative syntax Semantics