an overview of government-binding theory

8/8/2019 An Overview of Government-Binding Theory

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An Overview ofGovernment and Binding (GB) Theory

Through the years of dealing with the structure of language, the way its acquiredand the neurolinguistic processes

involved in producing and understanding language, Chomsky has considered the language theory within a relativelydynamic paradigm. Since 1956 he has presented the linguistics arena with different language theories in his worksamong which the most prominent ones are a) Syntactic Structures, b)Aspects (orAspects of the Theory of Syntax), c)

Some Concepts and Consequences of GB (Government and Binding), and his recently proposed work d) TheMinimalist Programme.

Here, his much-debated GB theory is briefly considered. To this end, the subtheories of GB theory areexplained briefly. The subtheories of GB are the following:1) X-bar theory

2) binding theory3) bounding theory4) case theory

5) theta ( ) theory

X-bar Theory

X-bar syntax deals with the structure ofphrases (subjectless group of words which contain no finite verb and form a

grammatical unit) ofany language. There are different types of phrases: AP (adjective phrase), VP (verb phrase), NP

(noun phrase), PP (prepositional phrase). Each phrase contains a head (the most important lexical item in a group of

words ), a specifier ( the lexical item which precedes the head), and a complement (the lexical item which follows

the head).So, for example a Noun Phrase like his fear of the dark1 has a structure like:

NP

Determiner (Det) N '

His N PP

fear of the book

in which his is the specifier,fearis the head of the phrase, and of the bookis the complement.

Of course the order of the constituents of phrases in different languages depends on the head parameter

which denotes whether the language is head-first (like English in which the complement follows the head) or head-

last (in which the complement precedes the head). Thus the structure of the English prepositional phrase in the street

in a head-last language like Japanese will be:

[PP[N the street[P in]]]

in which the streetis the complement and in is the head of the prepositional phrase.

Binding Theory

This theory determines the domain (area within its influence) of the reference of the expressions (e.g. pronouns) used

in a sentence. Different forms of expressions used in sentences can be categorized in the following:

a) Refer ring expr essions (e.g. Ali, Peter, my father, Johns mother, etc.) are free.

b) Pronominals (e.g. I, me, he, him, she, her, it, they, them, we, us, etc. ) are free in local domains.

c) Anaphors (myself, yourself, himself, herself, themselves, ourselves, etc.) are bound in local domains.

1) Adopted from Cook & Newson (1988), Chomskys Universal Grammar(P. 144),Blackwell Publishers

Upon reading the following examples the concept ofdomain becomes clear. For instance in the sentence:


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Anne Knew well what hermotherwas talking about .She is really clever.

Anne and her mother are referring expressions referring to two persons in the real world and they have no priorantecedent in the sentence; heris a pronominal and refers back toAnne;she can grammatically either refer toAnne or

her mother. In the sentence:

All of what you do is something [that]you do toyourself.

yourselfis an anaphor the antecedent of which is the secondyou.

Bounding Theory

Bounding theory deals with the movement of sentence elements which are going to be extraposed

(transferred to a higher position in the hierarchical structure of a sentence). The limitation imposed on how far themoving constituents can move is as following:

No moving constituent can move over more than one bounding node. The bounding nodes in English are NP

(Noun Phrase), and CP (Complementiser Phrase: any of a set of clause introducing words such as thatin Ali

said thatHasan would not come).

Therefore when a sentence like:

John believes the fact that Mary Knows his secret.

is inverted to a question to ask about his secret:

*what does John believe[NP the fact[CP that Mary Knows t?]]

it is completely observable that whatleaves a trace(t) and crosses the NP(the fact) and CP(that Mary Knows ).So, for

crossing more than one bounding node the sentence is judged to be ungrammatical.

Sometimes bounding theory is called subjacency principle.

Case Theory

In some languages NPs absorb some kind of ending to show the function of noun phrases. It is the case in some

languages like Arabic and German. The usual cases used are nominative case, accusative case, and genetive case. For

example in Arabic, a noun likeMohammadgets onat the end to show the nominative case (subject position case):

Koteba Mohammadon ketaban.

wrote Mohammad a book

Mohammad wrote a book.

While the same noun (Mohammad) may get another ending in another sentence because of the function it receives. In

the above sentence ketab has an ending anto show the accusative case(object position case).To have used the same

noun (Mohammad) in another sentence:

zoreba Mohammadan shadidan.

Was hit Mohammad severely

Mohammad was hit severely.

It is clear that Mohammad has an accusative case.

There are also other types of cases. One of them is the genetive case which is shown by s in English:

Anne borrowed Johns book for two weeks.

Here, s(ending for the genetive case which shows possesion) shows that the book belongs to John.


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Theta ( ) Theory

Any verb subcategorises (affects) some arguments (the nouns used for a verb). For example an intransitive verb like

sleep can just involve one noun as its argument (the baby):

The baby sleptwell last night.

However, a transitive verb like buy can involve three noun phrases as its arguments. In the following example the

verb bought involves (better to say, subcategorises) my father ,me, a history book:

My fatherboughtme a history book.

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The arguments referred to some sometimes are called agent and patient. For example in the sentence:

Rose broke the window.

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broke has two arguments:Rose and the window. Rose is considered as the agent (the person or thing carrying out anaction ),and the window as the patient (the person or thing being affected).

You can easily find the subcategorisation frames for most of the lexical entries in OALD (OxfordAdvanced Learners Dictionary). For example for the verb buy:

buy /baI/ (v.) ~ sth for sb or~sb sth

The above-mentioned theories are considered the most important elements of GB. They are explained in a

very simplistic way, however, to make the reader understand the basic essentials of this theory. At the end, it seems

necessary to be pointed out that these theories were just the gist of GB theory and there is surely far more to each of

the five components of the theory.

an overview of government-binding theory

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