Binding (linguistics)
In linguistics, binding theory is any of a broad class of theories dealing with the distribution of pronominal and anaphoric elements. The idea that there should be a specialised, coherent theory dealing with this particular set of phenomena originated in work in transformational grammar in the 1970s. This work culminated in government and binding theory (a general theory of innate linguistic structure) whose version of the binding theory is still considered a reference point, though it is no longer current. Virtually all generative syntactic theories (for example, HPSG and LFG) now have a "binding theory" subcomponent.
Read more about Binding (linguistics): Distribution of Nominals Under Binding Theory, Binding of Nominals Versus Operator-variable Binding, Syntactic Versus Semantic Binding
Famous quotes containing the word binding:
“What is lawful is not binding only on some and not binding on others. Lawfulness extends everywhere, through the wide-ruling air and the boundless light of the sky.”
—Empedocles 484–424 B.C., Greek philosopher. The Presocratics, p. 142, ed. Philip Wheelwright, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. (1960)