This study focuses on the relation of syntactic and semantic structure. It investigates the notion that within generative grammar there is a level of linguistic representation Logical Form. Its main assumption is that this is a level of phrase structure representation, derived by transformational operations from S-structure, and over which formal semantic interpretations are defined.
The study of anaphoric expressions—especially reflexives and reciprocals—has played an increasingly important role in linguistic theory. Within the Extended Standard Theory, the central notions of government and binding have depended crucially on the proper understanding of anaphoric relations. A Grammar of Anaphora offers the most comprehensive and significant treatment of such phenomena currently available.
This book presents a theory of grammatical relations among sentential constituents which is a development of Chomsky's Government-Binding Theory. The cross-linguistic predictive power of the theory is unusually strong and it is supported in the examination of a wide range of languages.Within the syntax of a language, grammatical relations determine such things as word order, case marking, verb agreement, and the possibilities of anaphora (co- and disjoint reference) among nominals.
This monograph examines complex words—compounds and those involving derivational and inflectional affixation—from a syntactic standpoint that encompasses both the structure of words and the system of rules for generating that structure.
Noam Chomsky, more than any other researcher, has radically restructured the study of human language over the past several decades. While the study of government and binding is an outgrowth of Chomsky's earlier work in transformational grammar, it represents a significant shift in focus and a new direction of investigation into the fundamentals of linguistic theory.
This is the third publication in the Linguistic Inquiry Monograph Series, which presents new and original research beyond the scope of the article format.
