 We are going to be talking about another module of principles and parameters framework of linguistic theory which is independently called binding theory. Now, just a small note on this terminology, the whole approach of principles and parameters in natural language is also known as the approach called government and binding theory. These are the different names for similar types of, similar types of explanatory tools of natural language. So, if someone asks you the differences between principles and parameters approach of looking at natural language and that of government and binding, the answer is none, they are the same thing. However, these terms independently mean different things, principles mean something else, parameters mean something else, government means something else and binding means something else that I am going to show you today. So, while looking at linguistic theory, we have been looking at several things. We know, first we looked at empirical facts of language in terms of its structure at the level of sounds, words and sentences, we started looking at that and then we started looking at what is it that we call principles of language, parameters of language and what is it that the whole approach called principles and parameters in natural language that does in terms of explaining abstract phenomena underlying language. In other words, abstract rules underlying language and finally, how does it really work? What do we mean when we say human mind has a great role to play in learning of language? It is a unique phenomena, we do not know how we end up speaking so much that we speak, we do not know how everybody speaks the same way in one language, within a language or beyond boundaries of languages. So, we looked at several things, we barely touched a couple of issues while talking about differences between i-languages and e-languages about e-language. Because larger chunk of what we ought to discuss in this course, within the framework of this course was related to i-languages, therefore we are still sticking with how i-language works and what is it that a particular linguistic theory provides us with to understand natural language and continuation of that we are going to be looking at binding theory. What is it that we call a binding theory? Like I have been telling you all the time names are names, names mean anything only in the context like we have discussed about words too that they are arbitrary, they acquire meaning when we provide the meaning, they do not mean anything by themselves. There is no reason why something should be called that thing. So, same thing applies here, however let us look at what we mean by binding theory. We begin with looking at some examples, even before we look at example just a sentence about binding theory, it is about interpretation of noun phrases. In a sentence that is within a sentence and the reason why we are saying within a sentence is because the minimum unit of discussion, the minimum unit for evaluation of anything or explanation of any sort of syntactic type is coming from a sentence. That is a sentence is a minimal unit of a study for understanding i-language, for understanding structure of language, therefore when we say interpretation of noun phrases, we mean interpretation of noun phrases within a sentence. So, we are going to look at them and now before we look at more of that in details, let us look at some of these sentences. Stars in the beginning of these sentences represent their ungrammaticality. That means the starred sentences are not grammatical according to the intuitive judgments of native speakers or for that matter this much intuition even we have as a non native speakers of English that these sentences are not good. So what are these sentences and I have also put some of the things with colors for us to see so that we can understand the things that we are referring to in the sense that what are the things that we are talking about when we say interpretation of noun phrases. So we have a first sentence John saw himself. In this sentence there are two parts, one is John the other is himself assuming that we know about the grammatical relations where one is the subject the other is the object. If we look at the grammatical category that is the category of a lexical item John is a noun phrase and so is himself. By the way we are talking about this kind of a phrase for the first time in this class what is the meaning of himself and if it is a noun phrase we are giving it a broader term which is called noun phrase. But what type of thing is this it is somewhere very close to a pronoun because we have seen something similar of that sort which is let us look at the next sentence John saw him. So do you see any similarity between him and himself similarity between them there is some sort of similarity between them however there is a difference too and the difference between the two leads the second sentence to ungrammaticality however independently the second sentence is not ungrammatical you see the point independently the second sentence is not ungrammatical and these things have meanings in terms of grammaticality of or ungrammaticality of a sentence given the interpretations of noun phrases. So let us move little bit slow in order to understand this thing not that we are trying to understand the sentence we are trying to understand a phenomena so there is a similarity between him and himself him is a pronoun therefore we can say himself is also something like a pronoun therefore it is qualifies to be a noun phrase however him is a canonical true pronoun and we are not that sure about himself it looks like a pronoun element but not that sure about sure about it now a word about ungrammaticality of the second sentence I said and you agree with that that independently the sentence is not ungrammatical right but this sentence is marked ungrammatical here can you tell me little bit why the sentence under which circumstances this sentence sounds ungrammatical and under which circumstances this is alright we know this thing right so can somebody quickly tell me in two sentences the sentence John saw him right is ungrammatical if we mean John by him right if him stands for someone else in the discourse then it is alright okay this sounds trivial but hang on we will come back to that it has something to talk about the interpretations of noun phrases that is to say in the first sentence there is a relationship between John and himself in the second sentence there may be or may not be if we try to establish relationship between John and him then the sentence is bad and if we leave them independent then there is nothing wrong with the sentence right so that's that's the part we need to keep in mind third one John thinks that Mary likes him right sentence is good right now it has independent noun phrases like John Mary and then it has a pronoun him who does this pronoun him refer to clearly John right clearly and now comparing with the first sentence sorry sorry I don't have numbers here but I am sure you can follow comparing with the previous sentence that is John saw him the third sentence is good in the second sentence him could not be associated with John therefore the sentence is ungrammatical but in the third sentence it's okay to associate him with John this is the point and the sentence is completely alright so this must have some there must be something going on here right alright we come back to that story in a moment in the next sentence John thinks that Mary likes himself is bad right this is this sentence is not grammatical not just because of Mary and himself okay not just because of that however that is true if we say John thinks that Mary likes herself then the sentence is good but keep in mind keep in mind even if we put let's say we put Peter in place of Mary in that sentence the sentence is good right John thinks that Peter likes himself now in that case I don't have that sentence here therefore I am just telling you in that case however himself has something to do with Peter not with John see this thing in that context my point is in look at the previous sentence again he can refer back to John in the previous sentence but himself cannot refer back to John in the in the sentence that we are talking about get get my point alright then last two sentences John thinks that he is a genius sentence is good right now who does he refer to in this sentence it could be John could it be anyone else also can be anyone else also right so comfortably we can say this sentence could be ambiguous could have at least two different meanings right very nice now how does two different meaning come from we we don't want to go into the details of semantics but just as a note here how does the ambiguity pop up ambiguity comes in by the interpretation of the pronoun he right if we interpret it independently then it has a different meaning that then the sentence has any has a different meaning if we interpret this pronoun with reference to John then it has a different meaning right get it alright finally John thinks that himself is a genius is not a good sentence right which is to say that himself in order to refer to John there seems to be some problem now look at the first sentence John saw himself is perfectly alright but when we say John thinks that himself is genius is not a good sentence in other words there is no problem establishing some sort of relationship between John and himself in the first sentence however in the last sentence it is not really possible to establish that connection between John and himself these are very simple sentences I hope I have given you in simple terms the interpretation of these these elements in color which you know as noun phrases and pronouns and nouns and stuff like them right and the ambiguity that comes out of them the reasons why these the sentences that are marked with the stars may be n grammatical right we however what we need to understand what we mean by interpretation of noun phrases in syntactic terms is the following what what allows reference between John and himself in sentence one and what stops reference between himself and John in the last sentence right what is the problem if the pronoun him refers to John in the second sentence right these are the the the the theoretical points that we need to discuss with the apparatus that we have seen so far which are at least phrases I am sorry x bar is key right and then we will see does existing apparatus give us explanation to these things and are those explanations convincing enough all right so that is the that is the purpose and that is how we look at binding theory so the terms like himself herself itself are called these are reflexes these terms are called reflexes they are called reflexes or reflexive pronouns because they reflect back to something in a sentence for these kinds of pronominal elements to appear like himself herself itself themselves right they need to co-refer to some other elements in the sentence okay they need to co-refer to something else in the sentence in other words they need to depend on something else for their interpretations therefore these are called reflexes or reflexive pronouns okay now here I have put the term enough first okay enough first is a theoretical term in government and binding in principles and parameters which means reflexives and reciprocals together do you understand when I say the term reciprocals sorry that is that is right reciprocals back to itself is reflexive reciprocals are terms like each other okay if we say something John and Mary like each other the term each other is called a reciprocal term which refers back to John and Mary when we say John and Mary like like itself the sentence is now good because itself is a reflexive right and it needs something called like a reciprocal so that the elements like reflexives and reciprocals both together are called enough first okay however like always I give you this freedom that these terms are not that important what is important is phenomenon okay he she her his it these are simple pronouns there is a typo his is not italics has got no meaning okay it's it's just a typo okay the the terms like John Mary computer classroom students that these terms which are which are like nouns they are called are expressions we can still call them nouns we are not changing anything that I only want you to know they are called our expressions because they are our expressions mean referential expressions okay they also receive their interpretations in sentences when we use a sentence when we use noun phrases like these okay they receive a particular meaning in a sentence and bear with me I will tell you what we mean by that the the reference of an reflexive is dependent on something in the sentence however the reference of a referential expression like John is not dependent on anything in the sentence rather it is dependent on something in the entire world okay which is the following with one one more sentence about it do you know how many johns are there in this world no right nobody knows but if if we end up talking right and I ask you did you know what happened to John yesterday right this conversation between us and this small a extraction of this sentence has a reference to John out of all the infinite johns in the world the speaker and hearer knows about the reference of the john in this sentence right we we say we infinite johns in the world we know who we are talking about okay this is why it is called our expressions in other words it receives its reference from rest of the world in a given discourse which for which it does not have to depend on any other component of a sentence making sense it is not it is not a very complicated thing that I am discussing it is a very simple idea it simply means these terms have their independent references they are not dependent on anything else clear all nouns are our expressions that is right no one no noun is a pronoun no noun is a reflexive yes true absolutely right so their computer is computer is not an r it is it is our expression it refers to all the computers of the world no definitely not the being a specific and providing a specific reference I the example that I gave you was definitely of specific reference and the reason I was giving that example is because I I wanted you are right I should have said that also whether we want to go all the way down to one out of infinite or we want to put all infinite together everything is possible with our expression this that will be the feature of an of of an our expression so when we say computers are smart are we leaving any computers out of this thing this with that sentence the reference of the word computers is to definitely all the computers of the world right it is true absolutely right now now look just just look at the specificity and breadth of the references that it is providing and that we are capable of providing any sentence right and still it is independent for its reference right all right clear reflexives pronouns and nouns now I have already told you about this thing I I wanted to talk about this little later but it is it is important to at least refer to this part that a particular module of this this theory which regulates noun phrase interpretations is called binding theory okay and this when we when we go again in details and see this theory has three three parts and each part is called is given a name like principle a principle b and principle c should not be very difficult for you to guess by now that a b and c rough would would finally end up referring to the three sets that I have shown you that principle a will be talking about reflexives principle b will be talking about pronouns and principle c will be talking about our expressions what is it that they have to talk is also very simple I will show you that but still the internal mathematics not not really in the sense of mathematics but the internal structure the the each one of these principles depends on how we look at structure and that that we are going to show you that that I will show you clear this thing so the again I repeat this thing that the the when when we try to regulate the interpretation of a of noun phrase in a sentence this is the part which is called binding theory and we are we are going to be talking about the governing governing distributions of noun phrases in a sentence are they related are they not related this is part of binding theory so now let us look at them independently again before we look at these principles and x bar theory okay so a reflexive or an or an enuffer now does not get its meaning from the open world unlike our expression that I just gave you it depends on something within the sentence and I I want to draw your attention in particular when we say within the sentence we do not mean it in a light sense we mean in the sense of strict definition of a sentence see my see my point strict definition of a sentence we we do not mean it lightly that anything could be a sentence and now who knows it better than you what a sentence means right sentence is not an ordinary looking thing in a in in the grammar of natural language sentence has it's a specific meaning right okay so John saw himself in the mirror the term himself is a reflexive and John is an R expression or forget about R expression right now John is a noun so himself needs to depend on John in this sentence and not on anything else in the entire world this is why it is called reflexive Mary bought herself a sandwich okay the interpretation of the term herself a reflexive and enuffer has to depend on Mary whoever that Mary is in the entire world given the two sentences the grammaticality of the two sentences tells you that the referential referential part is taken care of right this is what is the meaning of a reflexive or an enuffer now when we talk about pronouns we have we have talked about it very briefly and we have talked about its description in a in in a in any grammar whether we are looking at English grammar or a Hindi grammar what what have we been told about pronouns it's a term which stands for a noun at I am not saying that what we what you have been told or what we know about it is wrong that's that's fine but we need to look at it in little bit more details okay in in the following sense this is not this is not complete description of pronoun but this is at least good enough to begin with which is a pronoun is it is really little bit fishy okay it's it's not exactly like reflexives which which is reflexives strictly depend on its interpretation within the sentence okay we were looking at our expressions and I am going to to show you that also I'm coming back to pronoun when we look at our expressions there is nothing fishy about it it the the n-pays like John Mary or student professor a pretty girl or computers anything in a as a noun phrase okay may or may not have a reference outside the sentence but within a sentence it receives its interpretation from the whole sets available anywhere in the world get the get the point another significant point is it cannot be without a reference in a sentence that is a noun phrase must have a reference to something in a sentence clear okay I don't mean to say more than what I am saying right now but I do want you to understand that the the the things that I am saying some of them may sound pretty obvious but they have meaning for theoretical explanation the the explanatory capacity of the theory depends on these premises even though they sound intuitive okay for example I gave you a description of an NFL or a reflexive that it needs to depend on something you may say it's a trivial point yeah we see that John likes himself the interpretation of himself depends on John right you can say it's pretty simple point but that's that is the point the the simplicity of that point lies in the fact that one needs to depend on the other and no matter how obvious it is it has meaning for the explanatory capacity of the theory see understand understand my point okay so please bear with this and it's good that these things are these things may look simple to you and not too complicated all right okay yeah go ahead I'm going to that no John still has your reference think about it John see John thinks he's genius right in this sentence you're saying there are two possibilities one where John and he are related that is there that is when we are talking about the same person in that case he he gets interpretation from John right stop talking about he for a moment and talk about John John is still gets independent reference from the world that is to say the interpretation of one prime or one a in the interpretation of one a the reference of he depends on John not the other way around in one be the reference of he comes from somewhere else not from John still the reference of John is not dependent on he get the point the common thing between one a and one b is in both the cases John is independent of he whereas in one he is dependent on John in b he is not dependent John making sense right and and is this is this part clear to everybody our expression and that is the going back to that point that is the precise thing for which I ended up saying there is no fault of these pronouns I ended up saying the story of pronoun seems little bit fishy right and that is the fishiness which gives us ambiguity for example in in in other words so a pronoun doesn't refer to something in the open world that's the first feature of a pronoun okay it doesn't refer to something in the open world that is it is it's strikingly different from our expressions right when we say John thinks he is he is intelligent right he in interpretation b may not depend on John right but for its interpretation it depends on something which the speaker and the hearer knows right it may depend on Peter it may depend on Bill it may depend on anybody but it depends on something that this speaker and hearer knows about therefore it is not independent in the world that it it's its reference is limited and known right even when it is not referring to the available NP in the sentence for its interpretation we don't have to go too far not the whole world that's that's the meaning of the first sentence alright however it may get its difference from somewhere else and does not need to depend on something within the sentence and that is the that is what your example was talking about and I gave you it may depend on something in the sentence it may not depend on something within the sentence and that is what creates little bit of fishiness and and and we don't mean it in a sarcastic or or a bad way when we say fishiness we simply say we simply mean that this flexibility gives us ambiguity ambiguity very loosely speaking is a strength of language ambiguity is never a problem and ambiguity is not only the strength of language ambiguity is allowed within the language never never lose the track that we are talking about human mind okay ambiguities are allowed in language because language is one of the finest product of human mind and the strength of human mind can still get get correct interpretation no matter how ambiguous a sentence is trying to be am I am I making sense and and like like I said and and that's the reason why I said right in upfront that we are talking about ambiguity in a very very non-technical sense because the whole technical description of ambiguity comes in the branch of semantics it it can be mathematically coded or decoded it can be mathematically simulated the the ambiguities okay and it's a it's a very fascinating branch of a study of language on its own so since we have not been talking about semantics in great details and I have restricted myself to syntax and then I on the basis of that restrictive description I told you that now you know what a sentence means and you have seen how long hours we have spent discussing a sentence right we haven't discussed meaning in that sense therefore I'm talking about meaning in meaning in semantics in loose sense however given the given the fact that language is product of human mind and human mind the the and the capacity of human mind ambiguity no matter how difficult is a very simple phenomena of human mind it it does not I mean we need to figure out ambiguity but our our mind doesn't it it figures out very categorically look at that sentence also John thinks he is intelligent right we are talking about this as a sample as an example right when someone says this kind of sentence in the context does that person even need to say anything that this time I mean he by he I don't mean John we don't need to say these things we know very clearly whether it it's interpretation a or interpretation b without even getting oblique reference to anyone of these things okay just allow me one more small point it's not just about the interpretation of sentences the the capacity of human mind is fascinating which you already know I am only referring to them is is fascinating in the sense that with sentences okay with sentences it reads things that we don't even say have you must have heard things like sometimes people say something they mean something else have you heard this thing and it happens in day-to-day life in other words such a phenomena is a very normal pattern in society or within people among people human mind has got absolutely no problem figuring those things out you you look at political discourse or political context as an example or a very ordinary context of our day-to-day conversations right I may say many things without saying anything of that sort and then you understand exactly what I say that's the fascinating capacity and relationship between meaning language and human mind of which we haven't discussed much and when I say we haven't discussed much I mean not in a technical sense to simulate how the underlying mathematics of that sort works I conclude by saying that part that we haven't discussed here but people have worked on that to a great deal it's a it's a time of computer you're free to google and look at look at some of the things that branch is called semantics and there is another related branch which is called mathematical linguistics and there there are books after books written where you look at a book of mathematical linguistics it looks like geometry or algebra it will probably not even give you a single sentence like these that you see here on the screen and it talks with the mathematical notations in the entire paper or in the entire book talking about meanings and the interpretation of in that context we are talking about a very small fraction of interpretation all right give me another couple of minutes before we stop so I'm glad that you had already asked this question which I have here John told Mary that he likes pizza he is sometimes dependent on John sometimes independent of John Mary wondered if she agreed in this case the story is a little bit different and what is the difference of the in the story she as the pronoun is categorically someone else given the nature of the word wonder right the interpretation of she is not dependent on on Mary therefore this sentence is not ambiguous clear okay same thing is clear from the last sentence Mohan concluded that he was crazy right I mean we don't if if if if he refers to Mohan then he need he doesn't need to conclude that right in other words nobody needs to conclude that that person himself is crazy rather even if you try very hard you won't be able to conclude that right because nobody concludes that that nobody reaches that kind of conclusion and anyway I understand I hope you understand what I mean we have looked at referential expressions so what's the what's the problem in fact we have been talking about the problem all along I haven't waited for the problems to give you as part as in in one place so there are ways a very specific configuration in configurations in a sentence or beyond the sentence in which NFS pronouns and R expressions can or must be used you understand the meaning of configurations specific configurations right which is the the meaning of a specific configuration is very simple did did you did you read something that is in the red please please read that and then you will understand what I mean by a specific configuration all right now if we if if a specific configuration is not clear here it is the the use of himself must be within the sentence okay if you use this thing across sentences then it's not going to work this is why and again I am sorry that I don't have numbers but we can find things this is why the look at the last sentence last sentence is not good because himself is not part of the same IP now I now I start talking about sentences in terms of IP even though if if we say last sentence has one IP 1 and IP 2 even though they are related IP 2 is the complement of V of IP 1 clear IP 2 in the last sentence is the complement of V of the IP 1 am I am I speaking to you right without the structure that that's that should be clear right so even that is true even if that is true himself is part of IP 2 right and that is from IP 2 the the reflexive in IP 2 and it's it's the the other thing that it refers back to that's called antecedent okay that technically called antecedent so reflexives in IP 2 and antecedent in IP 1 is not allowed that is what we mean by a specific configuration specific the specific about this configuration is must be within the same IP two of them must be within the same IP their interpretations across IPs are not not allowed all right there is another problem related to the last sentence which and you can see and you can guess and then then I stop there and we will we will discuss this further tomorrow himself if you if you look at IP in terms of IP 1 and IP 2 you can see it can never be allowed in the specifier position of an IP the second in the second IP it's in the spec of IP that is a specifier position of the IP 2 what is that position for what is that position for spec of IP subject it can an expression of that sort can never be part of subject can never be subject as part of a sentence and and it's it's no big big big discovery it simply means if something depends on interpretation for its antecedent then its antecedent the antecedent by definition means something that precedes it right and the moment it becomes the first element in the sentence where is the antecedent in the sentence right therefore if there is one position where it can never occur is the spec IP in ordinary sentence also somewhere I just gave you that enough first reflexives must be within the same sentence right antecedent and reflexive must be within the same sentence someone can say himself likes John both of them are within the same sentence are they okay no the only reason for that is spec of IP is not for reflexives because it needs an antecedent clear more and more about it tomorrow thank you