TGG theory explanations with examples

1. Transformational Generative Grammar
1st
lecture
1) The study of language: -Language.
-Linguistics.
-Grammar.
2) Classical Grammars: - Sanskrit Grammar.
- Greek Grammar.
- Latin Grammar.
- Arabic Grammar.
Introduction:
- We were analyzing according to the old theory which divides language to levels.
- The new theory of linguistics looks at language as one whole body.
 What is meant by the scientific study of language?
Scientific study means it’s objective, we analyze what we observe. On the contrary, old study was
considered as Subjective not a scientific-like.
 What is the difference between Linguist, Linguistic and Linguistics?
- Linguist = is the one who studies language.
- Linguistic = is a normal adjective stems from the word “Language “.
- Linguistics = is the science that studies language.
 The word “Grammar” has many meaning different, varied from one to another position that it is
mentioned in.
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1.1 Language: is defined by Chomsky as “the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of
communication”.
- It is also defined by Sapir as “a purely human and non-instinctive method of communication ideas,
emotions and Desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”
- It is the subject of linguistics.
- The properties of human language: - Productivity, recursivity and displacement.
1.2 Linguistics: is the scientific study of language. It endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of
language.
 It has 3 aspects: 1. Language form structuralists
2. Language meaning Semantics
3. Language in context Pragmatics

2.  The judge Sir William Jones is the first person to address the field of comparative linguists and historical
linguistics.
 Sanskrit + European languages Indo-European family.
 Wilhelm Humboldt observes that human language is a rule governed system, anticipating a theme that was to
become Central in the formal work on syntax and semantics of language in the 20th
century.
- 1st
half of the 20th
century: Structuralists’ school it treats all languages equally.
- 2nd
half of 20th
century: TGG school it treats language as one entity.
 Structuralists school based on 1) Ferdinand de Saussure “In Europe”.
2) Edward Sapir.
3) Leonard Bloomfield.
 Noam Chomsky = Transformational Generative Grammar.
 William labov’s = Sociolinguistics.
 Michael Halliday = Systematic functional linguistics also modern Psycholinguistics.
1.3 Grammar: From Greek “ grammatiké ” and Latin which means the art of writing.
 In ancient civilizations, linguistic study was originally motivated by the correct description of classical
liturgical (church) Language, notably that of Sanskrit grammar by Panini.
 The importance of Grammar:
Grammar evolves through usage and also due to separation of human population.
Classical Grammars
They refer to the type of grammars and grammatical traditions existed in the ancient and classical periods.
2.1 Sanskrit Grammar: ( In Ancient India)
 Originated in Iron Age from the later Vedic period (8th
BC), AND Panini (4th
BC), it is a
comprehensive and scientific Theory of grammar.
 Panini is known for his Sanskrit grammar, his formulation of 3959 rules of Sanskrit morphology,
syntax and semantics in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi (8 chapters).
2.2 Greek Grammar: ( In Ancient Greece )
 Originated in the principles formulated by the scholars of Ancient Greece and Rome in the works of
Dionysius, Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Varro, and Priscian.
 Dionysius (100 BC) his grammar remained for 13 centuries.
a. He distinguishes two basic units of description: 1) sentence (logos).
2) word (meros).
In US.

3. b. He distinguishes the word categories:
1) Noun …. dnoma. 2) Verb ….rhema. 3) Participle …metoche. 4) Article ….. arthron.
5) Pronoun ….antoymia. 6) Preposition ….prothesis. 7) Adverb ….epirrhema.
8) Conjunction….syndesmos.
2.3 Latin Grammar: ( in Ancient Rome )
 Roman scholars largely applied Greek thought of language to the Latin language. The relatively
similar basic structures of the two languages facilitate the process of this metalinguistic transfer.
 Varro (116 – 27 BC) the author of “De Lingua Latina”, he distinguishes between derivation and
inflection.
 Priscian (AD 500) aims to transfer as far as he could the grammatical system Dionysius’s grammar as
well as the writing of others, to Latin. He used words categories of Dionysius omitting the articles and
including the Interjection. His work is based on the language of the best writers of the past. His
grammar marks the bridge between Ancient times and middle Ages in Linguistic studies.
2.4 Arabic Grammar: ( in Medieval Arabia )
 Arabic grammar emerged in the 7th
century according to Ibnu-Nadim the author of al-fihrist.
 Abu’l Aswad ad-Du’ali (7th
century) Arabic grammar, Basra.
1. The first to place dots on Arabic letters due to the multiply of non-Arabic Muslims who Recited
the holy Quran.
2. He initially established the vowel points in a form of dots not like recent ones.
Yahya ibn Ya’mar, ibn Aasim al Laith and al-Hassan al-Basri inserted both dots of letters and vowel points in
the Holy Quran.
Al-Khalil ibn Ahmed AL-Farahidi (718 – 786 c).
1. He presents the short vowel forms in the form of diacritics.
2. His best known contributions are Kitab al-Ayn and the correct standard for Harakat.
3. He firstly founded “the study of Arabic prosody, musicology.
 (Sibawayh) = Abu Bishr Amr ibn Qanbar Al-Basri, (c.760 – 796).
1. His seminal work “Al-Kitab” was the first written grammar of the Arabic language. He is the
greatest linguists of all time in any language. He studied extensively with al-farahidi, Yunus
ibn Habib and al-Akhfash.
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Traditional Grammar 2nd
lecture
1.Prescriptive Grammar.
2.Non-Structural Descriptive Grammar.
3.Shortcomings of Traditional Grammar.

4.  Traditional Grammar: is an approach which followed Latin, it is very related to Latin and similar to the
earlier one.
- It refers to any kind of grammatical system set out in and presupposed by standard modern grammars of
Greek &Latin.
- Grammars of this type consist of three parts: phonology, morphology & syntax.
- Grammars are characterized by a certain set of concepts especially the so-called grammatical categories
the features of these parts of speech which traditionally are called accidents or secondary categories;
including gender, number, Case, mood & tense.
1. Prescriptive Grammar: instructive rules
 It is considered as a subjective. Grammarians follow logic, Latin, old writing and what they think as
if they are the judges.
 Prescriptive grammar is an approach to grammar that is concerned with establishing norms of correct
and incorrect usage and formulating rules based on these norms to be followed by users of the language.
 The English language, which replaced Latin, had to appear as perfect as Latin. As a result, some English
scholars were greatly concerned with refining their language. Through the use of logic, they hoped to
improve English. The first Grammars of English were prescriptive, not descriptive in nature.
 The most influential grammar of this period was R.Lowth “Short Introduction to English Grammar
[1762].
 Latinization of English grammar was also reflected in the system of parts of speech.
 Some of prescriptive rules: see p. 32 33
 Prescriptive grammar could be characterized by four features: see p. 34
2- Non-structural Descriptive Grammar: scientific grammar
 It is considered to be the objective and follows writers only.
 In the second half of the 19th
century the development of prescriptive grammar was completed.
 Mason’s English Grammar (1858) and Bain’s higher English Grammar (1863), paved the way for the
appearance of a new type of grammar, viz. descriptive (scientific) grammar.
 Henry Sweet (1845 – 1912), the father of a new approach to linguistic studies, described this approach
in the preface to his work, New English Grammar; logical and historical (1891).
 Otto Jesperson (1860 – 1943) proposes three principles of classification meaning, form & function.
 The main ideas of non-structural descriptive grammar can be summarized in the following: see P.36

5. 4. Shortcomings of Traditional Grammar:
 It was criticized by the structuralists for many shortcomings, the main of them are as follows:
1- Inadequate approach: It suits European languages where Latin is used.
2- Unscientific approach: It is based wholly on logic, Latin and old writings; it doesn’t follow science.
3- Prescriptive rules: It forces native speakers to follow the rules but logic.
4- Notional sentence definitions: It is not functional.
5- Overstressed sentence analysis: We analyze sentence by sentence not clause or phrases.
6- Stressed written form of language: Only written not spoken written by old writers.
7- Inadequate explanation of Ambiguity: There were not good means to explain ambiguity.
Structural (descriptive) Linguistics 3rd
lecture
1) Structuralism and Structural Linguistics.
2) Basic Assumption of Structural Linguistics.
3) Bloomfieldian Structural Grammar.
4) Post-Bloomfieldian Structural Grammar.
5) Limitation of Structural Linguistics.
1. Structuralism and Structural Linguistics:
 Structuralism originated in the early 1900s, in the structural linguistics of the Swiss linguist Fredinand
de Saussure.
 It started in Europe and continued to America.
 Linguistics published in 1916, stressed examining language as a static system of interconnected units;
people speech.
 Fredinand de Saussure is known as a father of modern linguistics for bringing the shift from
diachronic, historical, to Synchronic, non-historical, analysis of language.
 It attempts to describe a language as it is used in terms of recurrent elements and recurrent regularities.
 Structural linguistics involving collecting a corpus of utterances of a language and then attempting to
classify all of the elements the corpus at their different linguistic levels: (phonemes, morphemes, word
categories, phrases, clauses, and sentences types).
 Thus, a structural linguist has to establish phonemes (phonology) without reference to morphemes
(morphology), and both phonemes and morphemes without reference to meaning (semantics).
 Generally speaking, the work of the structural linguistics is characterized by:
1) Attention to structure.
2) Study of the spoken Language.
3) Use of the inductive, observed method of scientific analysis and working
from to Meaning.
2. Basic Assumption of Structural Linguistics:
(The elementary objectives of it in which it’s claimed to be universal against tradition).
a. Priority of the spoken language: not written one because human starts speaking not writing.
b. Objective treatment of all human language: not European language.
c. Importance of synchronic description: “not diachronic one, it describes a language in a point of time”.
This may be distinguished from diachronic, which regards a phenomenon in terms of developments through
time.
d. Linguistics is a descriptive, not prescriptive science.

6. 3. Bloomfieldian Structural Grammar:
The non-structural descriptive approach to language had its glory days between 1900 and 1930. When it was
replaced by structural linguistics. The father of American structural linguistics, Leonard Bloomfield in his book
“Language” (presented the new approach as: “the study of language can be conducted ...only so long as we pay no
attention to the meaning of what is spoken”. Followers of the structural approach sought to study the structure of a
language as objective as possible, without reference to meaning and other languages, Latin &Greek. English was
regarded as a language having its specific structure, and the task of a linguistic was” to reveal it by using scientific,
formal method of analogy”.
 Structural study of meaning:
Meaning as a criterion was not reliable since being unobservable; it could be interpreted differently by
different linguists. Therefore, the linguist was to devise formal methods of analysis and replace meaning by form;
the linguists must be interested in what he observes i.e. objective data. Structural linguistics ignored meaning not
because they were not interested in. Meaning was ignored on the grounds that it was not observable and could not
be described objectively by using formal method.
- Structural grammarians have pointed out four devices used in English to convey structural meaning:
a. Word order.
b. Word form.
c. Word function.
d. Prosodic pattern.
Structural study of meaning see p. 53 / 54
8- Limitations of structural linguistics:
The major contribution of structural linguistics, according to Chomsky, are methodological rather than
substantive. It made the study of language scientific, precise, verifiable and objective. However, structural
linguistics was criticized for the following:
1. Being corpus bound.
2. Ignoring explanatory adequacy: A grammar is a theory of language. It is said to be explanatory adequate
if it correctly explains the interrelations of all language structures. The grammar produced by structural
Linguistics is not predictive and explicit; it does not offer explanation for the interrelatedness of the
various sentences in a language.
3. Ignoring meaning: Meaning was ignored on the grounds that it was not observable and could not be
described objectively by using formal methods.
4. Ignoring linguistic universals.
5. Ignoring speaker intuition: (no competence but performance).
6. Emphasizing parts not whole.
7. Fails to capture all ambiguities.
8. No account for grammaticality and acceptability.

7. TGG
5th
lecture (PART TWO)
 The basic Tents of the TGG theory:
- TGG is mainly concerned with the structure of sentences in a language. It tells us how syntax is
formed and learned.
1. Formulating a finite set of rules (an infinite number of sentences). See page 67
2. Describing native speaker’s grammatical competence:
TGG
Competence performance
(The speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his/her language) ( the actual use of language in concrete situation)
 Performance is not a true reflection of competence because native speakers make so many mistakes in
their performance “slips of tongue” or “performance errors” due to drunkenness, fatigue, drugs, loss
of memory and external distractions.
 These performance errors cannot be considered in any way as a sign that the native speaker is not
competent in his language.
 The grammatical competence of native speaker consists in various abilities including the following:
i. The intuitive ability to judge whether a sentence is grammatically well-formed or not.
ii. The intuitive ability to judge that certain sentences are semantically well-formed and that certain
other sentences are semantically anomalous.
iii. The intuitive ability to judge whether a sentence is phonetically well-formed or not from the
placing of stress in the sentence.
iv. The intuitive ability to make judgments about sentence structure.
3. Language acquisition is a rule-governed activity: see page 70
4. Identifying and establishing universal grammar:
 In addition to compiling the grammar of a number of languages, the TGG theory aims to abstract from
the grammar of those particular languages all those common features which can be described as features
of universal grammar or linguistic universals. See page 70 71
 Jacobson has identified about twenty distinctive features, out of which every language of the world
selects a few.
 Formal universals tell us about the rules that appear in grammar and the ways in which they can be
interconnected.
 All languages are structure-dependent: i.e. our knowledge of language depends on the structural
relationship between the constitutions of a sentence and not on the sequence of items in a sentence.
5. The innate ability and language acquisition:
According to cognitive psychology, every normal human being is born with an innate ability or
a language acquisition device (LAD) to acquire language. This innate ability can be understood in term
of a genetic blueprint of the basic essential of the common and universal properties of the grammar of
all natural language. i.e. every child is biologically born endowed with a preprogrammed universal
GRAMMAR.

8. 6th
Lecture
 The major parts of TGG: 1. Generative Grammar.
2. Transformational Grammar.
 Shortcomings of the TGG Theory:
 Generative Grammar:
- This part of TGG deals with the generation of correct and well-formed sentences in a language.
- Some rules are necessary for the formation of such correct sentences.
- Generative grammar: “A particular type of grammar which would have a very explicit system of
rules specifying what combinations of basic elements would result in well-formed sentences”.
- Generative grammar is a set of basic principles and explicit (finite) rules which deal with the
formation of well-formed sentences.
 Phrase structure rules:
1. S NP + VP.
2. VP V + NP or Aux + V or V + PP ……etc. (V + PP or V + Adv.)
3. NP Det. + N or N or Det. + Adj. + N ……etc. see P. 73
 Tree Diagram:
- Tree diagram “a way of representing a sentence with its structure which is drawn in the shape of
an up-side-down tree having branches. e.g.: The monkey ate a banana.
S Sentence level
NP VP Phrase level
Det. N V NP Word category level
Det. N
The monkey ate a banana Lexicon level
 The qualities of Generative Grammar:
1- The finite (explicit) rules of generative grammar enable us to form correct and well-formed
sentences, but not incorrect and ill-formed.
2- The finite (explicit) rules of generative grammar enable us to produce an infinite number of
sentences.
3- The finite (explicit) rules of generative grammar enable us to account for, take care, the linguistic
phenomenon of recursion.
- The finite rules of generative grammar are also recursive; that is, the same rule can be applied
again and again in accounting for such repeated constituents.
NP + VP NP + VP

9. a) I decided that my daughter should marry on Tuesday.
S
NP VP
V S
I decided that my daughter should
marry on Tuesday
b) Ahmed thought Ali helped him.
S
NP VP
N V S
Ahmed thought Ali helped him
4- Generative grammar enables us to differentiate between two structures of a sentence; deep
structure and surface Structure.
 Deep structure is the direct representation of the basic semantic relations underlying a sentence.
 Surface structure is the formal structure of a sentence as it actually occurs in speech or writing.
e.g.: 1. a. I ate a banana.
b. A banana was eaten by me.
2. The lady beat a man with an umbrella.
a. The lady is having an umbrella and she is beating the man with it.
b. The lady is beating the man who is having an umbrella.
 Deep structure and ambiguity:
e.g.: Flying planes can be dangerous.
1. a. planes + pres. –fly Flying planes can be dangerous.
b. planes + pres. –can + be + dangerous
2. a. X + pres.-fly + planes flying planes can be dangerous.
b. flying + pres.-can be + dangerous
OR
- Planes + pres. Be + dangerous + planes + pres. Fly Flying planes is dangerous

10.  Transformational Grammar:
 It is other fundamental element of TGG.
 It is represented by a set of rules originally called Transformational rules.
 Transformational means to change the form of something.
 We write a sentence then we change its form by moving, adding, or deleting some
constituents but the actual meaning remains the same.
e.g.: 1) a. I met my friend yesterday. b. Yesterday I met my friend.
 Another example is the active and passive (active -passive) transformation, where we have
two different surface structure (sentence) but, one exact deep structure (meaning).
2) a. The boy hit the girl. b. The girl was hit by the boy.
D.S. : a. NP VP. b. NP V NP .
S.S. : a. NP1 + V + NP2 . b. NP2 + AUX. –V-ed + by – NP1
o Short comings of the TGG Theory: See page 81 / 82
1. Of being complex.
2. Of being useless in in the language teaching classroom.
3. It concentrates on competence and ignores performance.
 The solution for those shortcomings is making a number of changes and modifications in the
theory.
7th
Lecture
 Recent Modifications in the TGG Theory:
1. X-bar Theory:
- This theory discusses tree diagram and structures; it is concerned with the study of a language
from the point of view of analysis. See P. 87 / 88 / 89 / 90
E.g.: a) The [ dean of humanities]
NP
Det. ?
N PP
The dean of humanities

11. b) that [ big [ book of poems] with the blue cover]
NP
Det. ?
AP ?
That Big ? PP
N PP With the blue cover
Of poems
- For the present, this new level of projection will be called the X-bar (X’) category. As a result,
our new syntactic category will be modified as follows:
1. Phrasal Categories (i.e. N’’,V’’,P’’,A’’,etc.)
2. X- bar Categories ( i.e. N’,V’,P’,A’,etc.)
3. Lexical Categories ( i.e. N,V,P,A,etc.)
c) This very tall girl. See P. 91
Old Analysis New Analysis
NP NP
Det. AP N Det. N’
This Deg. A girl This AP
Very tall Deg. A N
Very tall girl
 Applying X-bar theory principles on English phrases: X-bar theory principles can be applied now
easily to produce intermediate projection in analyzing all English Phrases, including Ns, Vs, and
Ps.
1. Intermediate projection of N: See P. 95
2. Intermediate projection of V: See P. 96
3. Intermediate projection of A: See P. 97
4. Intermediate projection of P: See P. 98
NOTE:
The symbol (‘) means this diacritic
form (-) yet, it is above the letter it
follows.

12.  Extending X-bar theory principles to sentences:
When the X-bar schema was introduced and generally adopted into generative grammar, it was
replacing a view of syntax that allowed for exocentric (without head) constructions with one that views all
sentence Structures as endocentric (with head). i.e. all phrases units necessarily have a head in the X-bar
schema, unlike The traditional binary exocentric division of the sentence(S) a subject and a predicate i.e. S =
NP + VP. The X-bar Schema was taken generative grammar one step toward a dependency –based theory of
syntax, since Dependency-Based structures are incapable of acknowledging exocentric divisions.
- Sentence as an inflectional phrase(IP):
Sentence is considered as an inflectional phrase (IP) “Inflectional Head” which may be pulled out as
information; i.e. morpheme involving grammatical features such as verb tense and agreement and modality
typically go in this position. The specifier of an IP is the sentence. The complement of an IP is the predicate
of the sentence.
 Finite verbs in sentence: + tense = +tns.
+ agreement = +agr.
 Non-finite verbs [gerund and infinitive]: - tense.
- agreement.
e.g.: The boss ate soup at home. IP
NP I
Det. N I VP
+ten. V PP
+agr. V NP P NP
The boss
Ate soup at home
For more examples see P. 100
8th
lecture
 Recent modification in the TGG theory:
2. Case theory: - Case.
- Care filter.
- Adjacency and case assignment.
- Exceptional case making.
- Accusative assigners trans. verb
Prepositions except “of” = it turns to be genitive case

13. - What assigns the nominative case is “I” of the sentence in the “IP”.
- If the sentence is ill-formed that means this NP has no case.
- “of” prep. As an exception. Is called case marking article; not assigner.
- Non-finite verbs cannot be assigners, while adjectives are governors.
- Case: case theory is one of the principal modules in Government and Binding, consisting of
various Case-Marking conventions and case filters. See P. 107 /
108
- Case theory recognizes two types of abstract case assignment: inherent / structural case.
NOTES:
 Inherent case has some connection with structural positions and is assigned at deep structural.
Structural case is associated with theta-roles and is assigned at surface structure.
In the standard TGG theory only one structural case, the accusative case, may be assigned by two
nodes: Verb (v) and preposition (p).
- V assigns the accusative (objective) case to the item it governs e.g.: The old man ---› helped
the cat.
- P assigns the accusative (objective) case to the item it governs: e.g.: for ---› for the old man to
come.
The only exception of prepositions is (of) possessive, a case marker that assigns the genitive case
to the girl. In other words, Poss. Assigns the genitive case to the NP in the possessor position.
However, in the general framework of the TGG theory, two structural cases are generally
recognized in English: The nominative case and the accusative case.
Case is assigned under terms of government or at least the nominative and accusative case are
assigned this way.
The accusative case is assigned to the complement of a verb, unless the verb is marked to assign
another case, and to the complement of a preposition.
Case is copied by the NP from its governor.
The values of case are always [-Nom] in English verbs and prepositions.
Case is formally assigned to the maximal projection.
In many languages including English, however, case get down into the head of the projection and
may be expressed as a morphological ending on the head.
 Case filter:
- Case filter constitutes the most general device by which every NP at surface structure must
have a case features. Even though empty NPs (i.e., Pro) do not have case, they are co-indexed
with NPs, in the sentence, that do have one. Case filter is used to show the well-formedness of
surface structure.
- Every lexical NP at surface structure (i.e. prior to semantic and phonological interpretation)
must be associated with exactly one case.
e.g.: ----› [ Peter] offered [Mary] [a flower].
accusative case
Nominative case inherent case

14.  Adjacency and case assignment:
For case assignment to take place, a case assigner must be adjacent to the complement to which a
case is assigned.
e.g.: 1. John speaks English fluently.  well-formed due to adjacency.
2. I sincerely believe English to be important.  well-formed.
3. John speaks fluently English.  ill-formed due to the barrier (fluently).
4. I believe sincerely English to be important.  ill-formed due to the barrier.
 Exceptional case marking:
Some sentences in English contain an NP that gets case from the upstairs verb, but is a subject of
the down-stairs verb.
e.g.: a) John expects [him to win].  him is an accusative case for “expect”.
b) John believes [him to be intelligent]  him is an accusative case for “believe”.
c) I don’t know [ CP whether [IP … to go to the party]]  When there is barrier, there is no O.
d) I don’t know [ CP whether [IP John him to go to the party]].  ill-formed due to the barrier.
1. My belief John to be honest.
They need case marking articles.
2. John is proud the dog to have won.
Like
1. My belief of John to be honest.
2. John is proud of the dog to have won.

15. 9th
Lecture
Recent modification of the TGG theory:
3. Government Theory:
4. Binding Theory:
 The main application of government relation concerns the assignment of case.
 In TGG, government applies also to [ +T] I, nouns and adjectives. Thus, governors, case assigner,
are heads of the lexical categories. This can be illustrated in the following:
1. The transitive verb [ V ] governs its object, e.g: She deceived me.
2. The preposition [ P ] governs its complement, e.g: She is happy with him.
3. The noun [ N] governs its complements, e.g: Teacher’s analysis of the sentence.
4. The adjective [A] governs its complement, e.g: She is envious of her sister.
5. And finally the [+T] I governs its subject, e.g: She is clever.
 X governs Y if :
1. X is a head.
2. X c-commands Y .
3. There is no governor of Y such that X c-commands the governor of Y (the intervening condition).
4. X is [ +G ] ( governor); and
5. There are no other barriers that prevent X from governing Y.
o The following illustrate all the instance of governors included in the theory:
1) [ +T] I a. She believes me. b. She believes that I am right.
2) Noun [ N ] c. The ruler of the country.
3) Adjective [ A ] d. …… proud of his achievements .
4) Transitive verbs [ V ] e. …….see the cat .
5) Preposition [ P ] f. …….on the seaside .
- Binding theory, in the main stream of TGG theory, determines the interpretation and distribution of
NPs, ( referential expressions, pronouns and anaphors ) in sentences.
 It is formulated in terms of three principles:
1. Principle A, which applies to anaphors.
2. Principle B, which applies to pronouns.
3. Principle C, which applies to proper names and other referential expressions.

16. - Principle A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal) must be bound in its local domain / governing
category (roughly, the clause). Anaphors have the following properties:
1. Pronouns, they must have an antecedent within the sentence. e.g.
a) * Himself arrived.
b) He arrived.
c) * [for himself to leave now] would be good.
d) [for him to leave now] would be good.
2. Anaphors must have features-compatible antecedents. e.g.
a) Stepheni likes himselfi.
b) * Claudiai likes himselfi.
3. The antecedent of the anaphor must c-command it. In other words, the antecedent for an anaphor
can be the subject of the sentence, but not an NP inside the subject. e.g.
a) * Stephen’si mother likes himselfi.
b) Stephen’si mother likes himi.
c) *[ That Stepheni is always ignored] irritates himselfi.
d) [that Stepheni is always ignored] irritates himi.
4. The antecedent of the anaphor cannot be “too far” from it, e.g.
a) * Stepheni thinks that Claudia likes himselfi.
b) Claudia thinks that Stepheni likes himselfi.
The antecedent of the pronoun cannot be “too close” to it, e.g.
a) Stepheni thinks that Claudia likes himi.
b) * Claudia thinks that Stepheni likes himi.
- Principle B: A pronoun must be free (i.e. cannot be bound) within its local domain / governing
category (roughly, the clause). e.g.
a) Omar said that he played basketball.
b) * Omari likes himi.
c) [ Omari’s mother]j likes himi.
d) Omari thinks that Maryj likes himi.

17. - Principle C: A referring –expression (proper names and common nouns).
a) * Johni likes Johni.
b) * Hei likes Johni.
c) * [ Johni’s mother]j likes Johni.
d) Johni thinks that Maryj likes John.
o Indexing, co-indexing and co-reference:
In binding theory, each NP in a sentence is giving an index, marked at the end of it (e.g.
himself, she, Omar, …etc.), to note which entity it refers to, e.g.
a. [ Noor]i hurt [himself]i.
b. *[Mona]j gave [her]j [a basketball]k.
o Binding then can be defined as: An element A bind an element B if and only if A c-commands ,
governs B, and A and B co-refer. e.g.
a. *The mother of Johni likes himselfi.
b. Johni saw hisi mother.