Government (linguistics) 1343753 216038412 2008-05-30T20:19:21Z ALpHatheONE 1407406 {{Unreferenced|date=June 2007}} In [[grammar]] and [[theoretical linguistics]], '''government''' refers to the relationship between a word and its dependents. There is a traditional notion of government, and a highly specialized definition used in some [[Generative grammar|generative]] models of [[syntax]]. ==Traditional usage== In traditional grammar, government refers to the selection of grammatical features by [[verb]]s and [[preposition]]s in [[inflected language]]s. Most commonly, a verb or preposition is said to "govern" a specific [[grammatical case]] if its complement must take that case in a grammatically correct structure. For example, in [[Latin]], most transitive verbs require their [[direct object]] to appear in the [[accusative case]], while the [[dative case]] is reserved for [[indirect object]]s. The verb ''favere'' (to help), however, is an exception to this default government pattern: its direct object must be in the dative. Thus, the phrase "I see you" would be rendered as "Te video" in Latin, using the accusative form ''te'' for the second person pronoun, while "I help you" would be rendered as "Tibi faveo", using the dative form ''tibi''. Prepositions can govern many different cases. A particular preposition can govern more than one case, with distinct interpretations. The definition of government can be extended to [[syntactic categories]] other than verbs and prepositions, and to grammatical features other than case. For example, the English [[adjective]] ''fond'' combines with a complement phrase introduced by the preposition ''of'' (as in ''fond of rice pudding''). The selection of this particular preposition by the adjective is an instance of government. ==Government and binding theory== The abstract syntactic relation of government in [[Government and binding theory]] is an extension of the traditional notion of case government. Verbs govern their objects, and more generally, [[head (linguistics)|head]]s govern their [[complement (linguistics)|complement]]s. ''A'' governs ''B'' if and only if: * ''A'' is a governor, * ''A'' [[m-command]]s ''B'', and * no barrier intervenes between ''A'' and ''B''. Lexical heads are assumed to be governors. Maximal projections are assumed to be barriers to government. [[Category:Syntax]] [[Category:Syntactic relationships]] [[ja:支配 (言語学)]] [[ru:Управление (лингвистика)]] [[de:Rektion]] {{Syntax-stub}}