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The Atsam Verb Phrase
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1.8 Brief Review of the Government and Binding Theory
This
theory is an off-shoot of traditional or classical grammar (Sanusi,
1996:19). According to cook (1988:30), Government and Binding theory
elaborates syntactic levels through the concept of movement. This theory
explains the universal Grammar as introduced by Chomsky (1981).
Government and Binding theory is a modular deductive theory of grammar
that posits multiple levels of representation related by a
transformation rule called “move alpha (a)†(Radford, 1988:401).
The modules of grammar is also known as sub-theories, they are related
in a modular form and sub-theories of Government and Binding theory are:
X – bar theory, Binding theory, Bounding theory and Control theory,
these sub-theories embodies the different principles and parameters
(Cook, 1988:159). The interrelationship of sub-theories of Government
and Binding Theory:
X-BAR THEORY
DEEP STRUCTURE
PROJECTION PRINCIPLE
(Adapted from sells (1985) and Cook (1988)).
1.8.1 The X-Bar Theory (X-Theory)
The
X-bar theory was first introduced in his grammatical analysis by
Chomsky (1970), in his article entitled ‘Remarks on Nomination’. The
X-bar theory is designed to formalize the tradition notion called ‘head’
of a construction and constraint to range of possible phrase structures
rules. The heart of the system is the recognition that the lexical
categories: Noun, Verb, Adjective, Preposition are the heads and the
project of other phrasal nodes Np, Vp, Adjp, and Pp respectively.
According to Ayankogbe (2002:21), X-bar theory is essentially a theory
of syntactic categories: according to which for any category X, there is
fixed hierarchy of units. As proposed in Chomsky (1986). X-bar
convention states that every maximal projection has a specifier of XP
position with one Intermediate bar projection serving as the XP’s core.
This core consists of head (XO) and the complement, which is maximal
projection in itself.
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