A step-by-step introduction to the government and binding theory of syntax

Notes on Linguistics. SIL - Mexico Branch and University of North Dakota, 1999.This text is designed to provide a data-motivated, stepwise introduction to the main tenets of the Government and Binding (GB) theory of Syntax, which was developed mainly by Chomsky (1981, 1982, 1986). The content of the articles is excerpted from the Syntax II course I taught at the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of North Dakota (SIL- UND), which was in turn based upon graduate courses I took from Dr. Sandra Chung at the University of California at Santa Cruz. After presenting a condensed version of this material to the staff at UND, I was encouraged to write up the material in a series of articles for Notes on Linguistics to make the material available to a larger audience. These articles (Black, May 96 - Nov. 97) are combined and slightly revised here, primarily for use as a textbook. I hope that new students and other readers will find this method of presentation as interesting and helpful as the past students and staff at SIL-UND have. The basic understanding of the theory gained should enable the reader to have much improved comprehension when reading theoretical articles and to see how formal linguistic analysis could be helpful to their own program.