slide for Master students (Syntax and Grammar)

1. BINDING THEORY
AN INTRODUCTION
By
GhulamAbbas Balti

2.  Let’s leave syntax for a moment and consider
some facts about the meaning of NPs in English.
There are some NPs that get their meaning from
the context and discourse around them. For
example:
 Felicia Wrote a fine paper on Zapotec

3. Cont...
 If you heard this sentence said in the real world the
speaker is assuming that you know who Felicia is and
that there is somebody called Felicia who is
contextually relevant. Although you may not have
already know that she wrote a paper on Zapotec this
sentence informs you that there is some paper the
world that Felicia wrote and its about Zapotec. It
presuppose that there is a paper in the real world
and that this paper is the meaning of the phrase a
fine paper on Zaphotec. Bothe a fine paper on
Zapotec and Felicia get their meaning by referring to
objects in the world .This kind of NP is called a
referring expression.

4. Anaphor ,R-expression and
Pronoun
 An anaphora, R expression and pronoun can
only appear in the subject position of
sentence.
 Heidi bopped herself on the head i wht a
zucchini.
 *Hereself bopped the heidi on the head with
a zuchini.

5. R-Expression
 NP that gets its meaning by referring to an
entity in the world. (RX)
Ali
Moon

6. (Anaphora)
 NPs that obligatorily get meaning from
another NP in the sentence.
Ali himself did this work.
Ali is my teacher. He is one of the best
teachers.

7. Pronoun
 An NP that may get its meaning from another
NP in the sentence. (Pro N)
HE
They
Their
The love Ali
The boy said that they died

8. Antecedent
 NP that gives meaning to another NP.
 Ali is my friend. He is coming here today.

9. Co-indexed
 Two NPs are con-indexed if they have the
same index.
Ali(i) hit himself(i) for hurting her(j).

10. Binding
 A binds B if
1 A and B are co-indexed
2 A c-commands B
Ali(i) hit himself(i) for hurting her(j).

14. B-Theory
 The theory of the syntactic restrictions on
where these different NP types can appear in
a sentence is call binding theory. Binding
theory makes reference to the structural
relations.

15. The Notions Co-index and
Antecedent
 We are going to start with distribution of
anaphors. First, we need some terminology
to set out the facts. An NP that gives its
meaning to another noun in the sentence is
called the antecedent.
 For example;
 Antecedent anaphora
 Heidi bopped herself on the head with a
zucchini.

16. Cont...
 We use a special mechanism to indicate that
two NPs refer to the same entity. After each
NP we write a subscript letter. If the NPs refer
to the same entity then they get the same
letter (j-j). If they refer to different entities
they get different letters (j-i).These subscript
letters are called indices or indexes

17. Cont...
 Examples:
 {Ali}i gave { Ahmad}j a {basketball}k
 {Ali }i said that {he}i played {basketball}k
 {Ali }i said that {he}j played {basketball}k
 .