government and binding theory
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Government and binding (GB, GBT) is a theory 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 (constituenc ...
and a
phrase structure grammar The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammar studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue ( Post canonical systems). Some authors, however, reserve the term for more restricted grammars in t ...
in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
in the 1980s. This theory is a radical revision of his earlier theories and was later revised in '' The Minimalist Program'' (1995) and several subsequent papers, the latest being ''Three Factors in Language Design'' (2005). Although there is a large literature on government and binding theory which is not written by Chomsky, Chomsky's papers have been foundational in setting the research agenda. The name refers to two central subtheories of the theory: ''
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
'', which is an abstract syntactic relation applicable, among other things, to the assignment of case; and '' binding'', which deals chiefly with the relationships between
pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( glossed ) 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 con ...
and the expressions with which they are co-referential. GB was the first theory to be based on the
principles and parameters Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general ''principles'' (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific ''parameters'' (i.e. markers, sw ...
model of language, which also underlies the later developments of the minimalist program.


Government

The main application of the ''
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
'' relation concerns the assignment of case. Government is defined as follows: A governs B if and only if * A is a governor and * A m-commands B and * no barrier intervenes between A and B. Governors are heads of the lexical categories (V, N, A, P) and tensed I (T). A m-commands B if A does not
dominate The Dominate is a periodisation of the Roman Empire during late antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was p ...
B and B does not dominate A and the first maximal projection of A dominates B, where the maximal projection of a head X is XP. This means that for example in a structure like the following, A m-commands B, but B does not m-command A: In addition, barrier is defined as follows:see "Minimality" in Haegeman 1994:163f. A barrier is any node Z such that * Z is a potential governor for B and * Z
c-command In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic movem ...
s B and * Z does not
c-command In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic movem ...
A The government relation makes case assignment unambiguous. The tree diagram below illustrates how DPs are governed and assigned case by their governing heads: Another important application of the government relation constrains the occurrence and identity of traces as the Empty Category Principle requires them to be properly governed.


Binding

Binding can be defined as follows: * An element α binds an element β if and only if α
c-command In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic movem ...
s β, and α and β corefer. Consider the sentence "Johni saw hisi mother", which is diagrammed below using simple phrase structure trees. The NP "John" c-commands "his" because the first parent of the NP, S, contains "his". "John" and "his" are also coreferential (they refer to the same person), therefore "John" binds "his". On the other hand, in the ungrammatical sentence "*The mother of Johni likes himselfi", "John" does not c-command "himself", so they have no binding relationship despite the fact that they corefer. The importance of binding is shown in the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of the following sentences: # *Johni saw himi. # Johni saw himselfi. # *Himselfi saw Johni. # *Johni saw Johni. Binding is used, along with particular binding principles, to explain the ungrammaticality of statements 1, 3, and 4. The applicable rules are called Binding Principle A, Binding Principle B, and Binding Principle C. *Principle A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal, such as "each other") must be bound in its governing category (roughly, the clause). Since "himself" is not c-commanded by "John" in sentence Principle A is violated. *Principle B: a pronoun must be free (i.e., not bound) within its governing category (roughly, the clause). In sentence "him" is bound by "John", violating Principle B. *Principle C: an R-expression must be free (i.e., not bound). R-expressions (e.g. "the dog" or "John") are referential expressions: unlike pronouns and anaphora, they independently refer, i.e., pick out entities in the world. In sentence the first instance of "John" binds the second, violating Principle C. Note that Principles A and B refer to "governing categories"—domains which limit the scope of binding. The definition of a governing category laid out in ''Lectures on Government and Binding'' is complex, but in most cases the governing category is essentially the minimal clause or complex NP.


References

Notes Further reading * Liliane Haegeman (1994). ''Introduction to Government and Binding Theory'' (Second Edition). Blackwell.


External links


A step-by-step introduction to the Government and Binding theory of syntax
{{Authority control Generative syntax Syntactic relationships Syntax Noam Chomsky Grammar frameworks Theories of language