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of innate linguistic structure) whose version of the binding theory is still considered a reference point, though it is no longer current.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:
“[Government’s] true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves—in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence, not in its control, but in its protection, not in binding the states more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)