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: 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.
Read more about this topic: Government And Binding Theory
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“Our domestic problems are for the most part economic. We have our enormous debt to pay, and we are paying it. We have the high cost of government to diminish, and we are diminishing it. We have a heavy burden of taxation to reduce, and we are reducing it. But while remarkable progress has been made in these directions, the work is yet far from accomplished.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)