Government

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1 Lexeme-specific property of verbs, adjectives, prepositions, or nouns that determines the morphological realization (especially case) of dependent elements. Government can be subsumed under valence in so far as elements with valence govern the morphological form of their ‘governed’ (dependent) elements. The term ‘government’ is used especially with verbs whose differing valence is the primary criterion for distinguishing between transitive and intransitive verbs ( transitivity). The syntactic functions of the elements accompanying the verb are based on the various governing cases. Case can also be determined by genitive or prepositional attributes (Ger. Land des Glaubens (genitive) ‘land of faith,’ Hoffnung auf Frieden (accusative) ‘hope for peace’), adjectives (Ger. dem Vater ähnlich (dative) ‘like the father’), and prepositions (Russ. c (instrumental) ‘with, by means of). The term government is used in some studies to indicate the marking of object functions by means of prepositions rather than case marking: the verb to think governs the preposition of. ( also prepositional object)

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2 In the framework of transformational grammar ( Government and Binding theory), the term government has a more precise use: in order for government to be possible, in a local area in a phrase structure diagram there can be no maximal projection, in the sense of X-bar theory, between the governor and the governed, i.e. there can be no phrasal category which does not dominate both the governor as well as the governed. This local area plays a central role both in case theory as well as in various other theoretical areas, such as governing category and empty category principle. ( also binding theory)

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