adjacency condition

A condition on the assignment of CASE in GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY which blocks Case-assignment to those NOUN PHRASES not adjacent to the Case-assigner. Since the Case filter requires every overt NP to be Case-marked, the adjacency condition forces NP COMPLEMENTS to appear closer to their Case-assigner, and thus to precede non-NP complements, as in English John put a book on the shelf but not *John put on the shelf a book.