An Overview of

Government and Binding (GB) Theory

Through the years of dealing with the structure of language, the way it’s acquired and the neurolinguistic processes
involved in producing and understanding language, Chomsky has considered the language theory within a relatively
dynamic paradigm. Since 1956 he has presented the linguistics arena with different language theories in his works
among which the most prominent ones are a) Syntactic Structures, b) Aspects (or Aspects of the Theory of Syntax), c)
Some Concepts and Consequences of GB (Government and Binding), and his recently proposed work d) The
Minimalist Programme.
Here, his much-debated GB theory is briefly considered. To this end, the subtheories of GB theory are
explained briefly. The subtheories of GB are the following:
1) X-bar theory
2) binding theory
3) bounding theory
4) case theory
5) theta (θ) theory

X-bar Theory

X-bar syntax deals with the structure of phrases (subjectless group of words which contain no finite verb and form a
grammatical unit) of any 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 dark”1 has a structure like:
NP

Determiner (Det) N'

His N PP

fear of the book

in which his is the specifier, fear is the head of the phrase, and of the book is 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 street is 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) Referring expressions (e.g. Ali, Peter, my father, John’s 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), Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (P. 144), Blackwell Publishers
Upon reading the following examples the concept of domain becomes clear. For instance in the sentence:
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Anne Knew well what her mother was 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 prior
antecedent in the sentence; her is a pronominal and refers back to Anne; she can grammatically either refer to Anne or
her mother. In the sentence:

All of what you do is something [that] you do to yourself.

yourself is an anaphor the antecedent of which is the second you.

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 the
moving 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 that in “Ali
said that Hasan 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 what leaves 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 like Mohammad gets on at 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 an to 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 John’s 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 (θ) 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 slept well 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 father bought me a history book.

1 2 3
The arguments referred to some sometimes are called agent and patient. For example in the sentence:

Rose broke the window.

1 2

broke has two arguments: Rose and the window. Rose is considered as the agent (the person or thing carrying out an
action ),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 (Oxford
Advanced 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.