Government and binding theory

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Government and binding (GB, GBT) is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. [1] [2] [3] This theory is a radical revision of his earlier theories [4] [5] [6] and was later revised in The Minimalist Program (1995) [7] and several subsequent papers, the latest being Three Factors in Language Design (2005). [8] 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.

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The name refers to two central subtheories of the theory: government , 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 and the expressions with which they are co-referential. GB was the first theory to be based on the principles and parameters model of language, which also underlies the later developments of the minimalist program.

Government

The main application of the government relation concerns the assignment of case. Government is defined as follows:

A governs B if and only if

Governors are heads of the lexical categories (V, N, A, P) and tensed I (T). A m-commands B if A does not dominate 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:

ApBp.png

In addition, barrier is defined as follows: [9] A barrier is any node Z such that

The government relation makes case assignment unambiguous. The tree diagram below illustrates how DPs are governed and assigned case by their governing heads:

HeSmashedTheVase1.png

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:

Consider the sentence "Johni saw hisi mother", which is diagrammed below using simple phrase structure trees.

Government and Binding Theory basic tree.png

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 mother of John.png

The importance of binding is shown in the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of the following sentences:

  1. *Johni saw himi.
  2. Johni saw himselfi.
  3. *Himselfi saw Johni.
  4. *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.

Since "himself" is not c-commanded by "John" in sentence [3], Principle A is violated.

In sentence [1], "him" is bound by "John", violating Principle B.

In sentence [4], 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 [1] is complex, but in most cases the governing category is essentially the minimal clause or complex NP.

Related Research Articles

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), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.

A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech, are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the phrasal categories are also syntactic categories. Dependency grammars, however, do not acknowledge phrasal categories.

In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones. The method is commonly associated with American linguist Noam Chomsky.

In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970 and further developed by Ray Jackendoff, along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky. It attempts to capture the structure of phrasal categories with a single uniform structure called the X-bar schema, basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP that is headed by a given syntactic category X. It played a significant role in resolving issues that phrase structure rules had, representative of which is the proliferation of grammatical rules, which is against the thesis of generative grammar.

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In linguistics, binding is the phenomenon in which anaphoric elements such as pronouns are grammatically associated with their antecedents. For instance in the English sentence "Mary saw herself", the anaphor "herself" is bound by its antecedent "Mary". Binding can be licensed or blocked in certain contexts or syntactic configurations, e.g. the pronoun "her" cannot be bound by "Mary" in the English sentence "Mary saw her". While all languages have binding, restrictions on it vary even among closely related languages. Binding has been a major area of research in syntax and semantics since the 1970s, and was a major for the government and binding theory paradigm.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empty category principle</span>

In linguistics, the empty category principle (ECP) was proposed in Noam Chomsky's syntactic framework of government and binding theory. The ECP is supposed to be a universal syntactic constraint that requires certain types of empty categories, namely traces, to be properly governed.

In generative linguistics, PRO is a pronominal determiner phrase (DP) without phonological content. As such, it is part of the set of empty categories. The null pronoun PRO is postulated in the subject position of non-finite clauses. One property of PRO is that, when it occurs in a non-finite complement clause, it can be bound by the main clause subject or the main clause object. The presence of PRO in non-finite clauses lacking overt subjects allows a principled solution for problems relating to binding theory.

The Tensed-S condition is a condition proposed in Noam Chomsky (1973) which essentially stipulates that certain classes of syntactic transformational rules cannot apply across clause boundaries. The condition is formalised as follows:

Merge is one of the basic operations in the Minimalist Program, a leading approach to generative syntax, when two syntactic objects are combined to form a new syntactic unit. Merge also has the property of recursion in that it may apply to its own output: the objects combined by Merge are either lexical items or sets that were themselves formed by Merge. This recursive property of Merge has been claimed to be a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes language from other cognitive faculties. As Noam Chomsky (1999) puts it, Merge is "an indispensable operation of a recursive system ... which takes two syntactic objects A and B and forms the new object G={A,B}" (p. 2).

Syntactic movement is the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities. Movement was first postulated by structuralist linguists who expressed it in terms of discontinuous constituents or displacement. Some constituents appear to have been displaced from the position in which they receive important features of interpretation. The concept of movement is controversial and is associated with so-called transformational or derivational theories of syntax. Representational theories, in contrast, reject the notion of movement and often instead address discontinuities with other mechanisms including graph reentrancies, feature passing, and type shifters.

In linguistics, locality refers to the proximity of elements in a linguistic structure. Constraints on locality limit the span over which rules can apply to a particular structure. Theories of transformational grammar use syntactic locality constraints to explain restrictions on argument selection, syntactic binding, and syntactic movement.

A resumptive pronoun is a personal pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent after a pause or interruption, as in This is the girli that whenever it rains shei cries.

Avalency refers to the property of a predicate, often a verb, taking no arguments. Valency refers to how many and what kinds of arguments a predicate licenses—i.e. what arguments the predicate selects grammatically. Avalent verbs are verbs which have no valency, meaning that they have no logical arguments, such as subject or object. Languages known as pro-drop or null-subject languages do not require clauses to have an overt subject when the subject is easily inferred, meaning that a verb can appear alone. However, non-null-subject languages such as English require a pronounced subject in order for a sentence to be grammatical. This means that the avalency of a verb is not readily apparent, because, despite the fact that avalent verbs lack arguments, the verb nevertheless has a subject. According to some, avalent verbs may have an inserted subject, which is syntactically required, yet semantically meaningless, making no reference to anything that exists in the real world. An inserted subject is referred to as a pleonastic, or expletive it. Because it is semantically meaningless, pleonastic it is not considered a true argument, meaning that a verb with this it as the subject is truly avalent. However, others believe that it represents a quasi-argument, having no real-world referent, but retaining certain syntactic abilities. Still others consider it to be a true argument, meaning that it is referential, and not merely a syntactic placeholder. There is no general consensus on how it should be analyzed under such circumstances, but determining the status of it as a non-argument, a quasi-argument, or a true argument, will help linguists to understand what verbs, if any, are truly avalent. A common example of such verbs in many languages is the set of verbs describing weather. In providing examples for the avalent verbs below, this article must assume the analysis of pleonastic it, but will delve into the other two analyses following the examples.

A bound variable pronoun is a pronoun that has a quantified determiner phrase (DP) – such as every, some, or who – as its antecedent.

In formal syntax, a node is a point in a tree diagram or syntactic tree that can be assigned a syntactic category label.

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 Chomsky, Noam (1993) [1981]. Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures . Mouton de Gruyter.
  2. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1982). Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding . Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 6. MIT Press.
  3. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1986). Barriers. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 13. MIT Press.
  4. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (2002) [1957]. Syntactic Structures (Second Edition). Mouton de Gruyter.
  5. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax . MIT Press.
  6. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972). The Hague: Mouton. Pages 11–61.
  7. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program . MIT Press.
  8. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (2005). "Three Factors in Language Design" (PDF). Linguistic Inquiry. 36 (36): 1–22. doi:10.1162/0024389052993655.
  9. ↑ see "Minimality" in Haegeman 1994:163f.

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