Government and binding theory

Government and binding is a theory of syntax in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. [cite book|title=Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures|year=1981/1993|publisher=Mouton de Gruyter|author=Chomsky, Noam] [cite book|title=Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding|author=Chomsky, Noam|publisher=Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 6. MIT Press|year=1982] [cite book|title=Barriers|author=Chomsky, Noam|year=1986|publisher=Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 13. MIT Press] This theory is a radical revision of his earlier theories [cite book|title=Syntactic Structures (Second Edition)|author=Chomsky, Noam|year=1957/2002|publisher=Mouton de Gruyter] [cite book|title=Aspects of the Theory of Syntax|year=1965|publisher=MIT Press|author=Chomsky, Noam] [Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In "Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar" (1972). The Hague: Mouton. Pages 11-61.] and was later revised in "The Minimalist Program" (1995) [cite book|title=The Minimalist Program|author=Chomsky, Noam|publisher=MIT Press|year=1995] and several subsequent papers, the latest being "Three Factors in Language Design" (2005). [cite journal|author=Chomsky, Noam|title= [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/linguistic_inquiry/v036/36.1chomsky.pdf Three Factors in Language Design] |year=2005|journal=Linguistic Inquiry|issue=36|pages=1–22|doi=10.1162/0024389052993655|volume=36] 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, which is an abstract syntactic relation, and binding, which deals with the referents of pronouns, anaphors, and R-expressions. 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
* 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 B and B does not dominate A and the first maximal projection of A dominates B. 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-commands B and
* Z does not c-command 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-commands β, and α and β are co-referent.

Consider the sentence "John saw his mother." which is diagrammed below using simple phrase structure rules.

"John" c-commands "his" because the first non-trivial parent of "John", S, contains "his". "John" and "his" are also co-referent (they refer to the same person), therefore "John" binds "his".

On the other hand, in the sentence "A friend of John saw his mother", "John" does not c-command "his", so they have no binding relationship, regardless of whether they are co-referent (which they may be; the example is ambiguous).

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

1. *John_i saw him_i. (ungrammatical with co-reference)
2. John saw himself. (unambiguously co-referent)
3. *Himself saw John. (ungrammatical)
4. *John_i saw John_i. (ungrammatical, unless it refers to two distinct Johns)

Binding is used, along with particular binding principles, to explain the ungrammaticality of those statements. The applicable rules are called Binding Principle A, Binding Principle B, and Binding Principle C.

*Principle A states that anaphors (reflexives and reciprocals, such as "each other") must always be bound in their domains. Since there is nothing to bind "himself" in sentence [3] , that principle is violated, and the sentence is ungrammatical.

*Principle B states that a pronoun must never be bound within its domain. If, in sentence [1] , "John" and "him" are co-referent, then there is a binding relationship between them, violating the principle and resulting in ungrammaticality.

*Principle C states that R-expressions must never be bound. R-expressions are referential expressions: non-pronoun, uniquely identifiable entities, such as "the dog", or proper names such as "John". In sentence [4] , the first instance of "John" binds the second, resulting in the ungrammaticality.

Note that Principles A and B refer to domains. It is difficult to define a domain in a way that explains all the data, though the definition may be related to movement islands and the Phase Impenetrability Constraint.

Further reading

* Liliane Haegeman (1994). "Introduction to Government and Binding Theory" (Second Edition). Blackwell.

References

External links

* [http://www.sil.org/mexico/ling/E002-IntroGB.pdf A step-by-step introduction to the Government and Binding theory of syntax]
* [http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/CL/gschneid/dreitaegig.pdf Introduction to GB]