global (adj.)

A term used in GENERATIVE LINGUISTIC theory in the early 1970s to refer to a type of RULE (a global rule) which extends over entire DERIVATIONS, or parts of derivations, and cannot be satisfactorily stated in terms of TRANSFORMATIONAL operations that define the conditions of WELL-FORMEDNESS on individual phrase-markers or pairs of adjacent PHRASE-MARKERS in a derivation. Global rules (or ‘global derivational CONSTRAINTS’) thus contrast with PHRASE-STRUCTURE and TRANSFORMATIONAL rules, as traditionally understood: they define the conditions of well-formedness on configurations of corresponding NODES in non-adjacent phrase-markers. Several topics in PHONOLOGY, SYNTAX and SEMANTICS have been analyzed in these terms (e.g. CASE AGREEMENT, CONTRACTED forms, placement of contrastive STRESS).