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Although generative linguistics is predominantly a syntax‐focused program (see Jackendoff 2002 for criticism of this fact), the methodology described in the previous section is intended for use in all linguistic subfields (see Chomsky and Halle 1968 for a famous application of the methodology to phonology). Its enduring association with syntactic research stems from the fact that Chomsky first employed the methodology to study the regularities of English syntax in Syntactic Structures (1957). In addition, Syntactic Structures also set the research agenda for precisely which syntactic regularities linguists would focus on in the early period (the 1960s and 1970s) of generative theorizing. From a broad, theory‐neutral perspective, the regularities in question can each be described as instantiating a nonlocal dependency. One example of a nonlocal dependency is the relationship that obtains between every Englishman and his in (1): the specification for his depends on the specification for every Englishman (i.e. Gerald takes pride in Gerald's garden, Norman takes pride in Norman's garden, etc.), even though these phrases are separated by the string of words takes pride in.

1 (1) Every Englishman takes pride in his garden.

This concrete notion of a nonlocal dependency can be extended to include a slightly more abstract case, such as the dependency into which the nominal expression the cake enters in (3). In (2), this expression occupies a position immediately following the verb. Because this position is the designated object position in English, the cake is understood as the sentence's object, i.e. the thing being eaten. In (3), however, the cake is still understood as the object of the sentence, despite being separated from the position immediately following the verb by two words (namely, was and eaten). In this configuration, one may characterize the cake as entering into a nonlocal dependency with the position immediately following the verb, which is represented by the symbol “Δ” in (3) and is known as the gap (or an empty category).

1 (2) Ashley ate the cake.

2 (3) The cake was eaten Δ by Ashley.

Influenced by ideas developed by Harris (1952, 1957), Chomsky in Syntactic Structures (1957) introduced the idea that certain sentences are derived from other sentences via rewrite rules over phrase markers (a special type of derivation tree whose termini are adorned with the atoms of syntactic analysis, namely words and morphemes), which he called transformations. One such transformation is the passive transformation, which converts the phrase marker for an active sentence such as (2) into its passive counterpart in (3). Although Chomsky did not originally view the output of a transformation as instantiating a nonlocal dependency,⁴ the way in which his transformational analysis focused generative linguists' attention on nonlocal dependencies from the outset of the generativist enterprise is clear, as transformations suggest that some nonlocal connection – in this case, a derivational history – obtains between the two positions of the cake in (2) and (3). This early focus on nonlocal dependencies and the constraints on establishing them produced many of the early enduring discoveries of generative syntax.

In the remainder of this section, which constitutes the main body of our overview, we first outline some of the enduring discoveries made about the syntactic structures that serve as the scaffolding for nonlocal dependencies (Section 4.3.1), before turning our attention to enduring discoveries made about nonlocal dependencies themselves (Section 4.3.2). It will become clear from the discussions in these sections that natural language contains many gaps (also known as empty categories): Section 4.3.3 discusses the variety of gaps that generative linguists have uncovered.