Binding (linguistics)
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Binding theory is a term within linguistics which refers to a broad class of theories dealing with the distribution of pronominal elements. The idea that there should be a specialised, coherent theory dealing with this particular set of phenomena originated in work in transformational grammar in the 1970s. This work culminated in government and binding theory (a general theory of innate linguistic structure) whose version of the binding theory is still considered a reference point, though it is no longer current. Virtually all generative syntactic theories now have a "binding theory" subcomponent (for example, HPSG and LFG).
[edit] Binding in English
In English, pronouns are traditionally divided into two classes, anaphors and pronouns. Anaphors include reflexive elements (such as himself) and reciprocal elements (such as each other). These must have a local antecedent. Examples of pronouns are they, him, her. Pronouns must have non-local antecedents.
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