subjacency (n.)

A term used in EXTENDED STANDARD THEORY and GOVERNMENT BINDING THEORY to refer to a type of CONDITION which restricts the application of a TRANSFORMATIONAL RULE; it is the main principle of BOUNDING theory. The subjacency condition states that a CONSTITUENT cannot be moved (in any single application) across more than one bounding NODE. For example, in the sentence The story that [[the quarrel about pay_NP] was wrong_S] is irrelevant, the brackets mark the place of the constituent boundaries np and s. To move the phrase about pay to the right of wrong is possible, because only one bounding node has been crossed; but it is not possible to move this phrase to the right of irrelevant, according to the subjacency condition, because then both the NP and S nodes would be crossed. It has been argued that it is possible to subsume several earlier ISLAND CONSTRAINTS under this condition, which is claimed to be more GENERAL and NATURAL as a consequence.