About the Book
This volume presents the latest research in linguistic modules and interfaces in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). LFG has a highly modular design that models the linguistic system as a set of discreet submodules that include, among others, constituent structure, functional structure, argument structure, semantic structure, and prosodic structure; each module has its own coherent properties and is related to other modules by correspondence functions.
Following a detailed introduction, Part I examines the nature of linguistic structures, interfaces, and representations in LFG's architecture and ontology. Parts II and III are concerned with
problems, analyses, and generalizations associated with linguistic phenomena of long-standing theoretical significance, including agreement, reciprocals, possessives, reflexives, raising, subjecthood, and relativization, demonstrating how these phenomena can be naturally accounted for within LFG's modular architecture. Part IV explores issues of the synchronic and diachronic dynamics of syntactic categories in grammar, such as unlike category coordination, fuzzy categorial edges, and
consequences of decategorialization, providing explicit LFG solutions to such problems, including those resulting from language change in progress. The final part re-examines and refines the precise
representations and interfaces of syntax with morphology, semantics, and pragmatics to account for challenging facts such as suspended affixation, prosody in multiple question word interrogatives and information structure, anaphoric dependencies, and idioms. The volume draws on data from a range of typologically diverse languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Icelandic, Kelabit, Polish, and Urdu, and will be of interest not only to those working in LFG and related frameworks, but to all those
working on linguistic interfaces from a variety of theoretical standpoints.
Table of Contents:
1: Ronald M. Kaplan and Joan Bresnan: Introduction Part I: Architecture and ontology 2: Avery Andrews: A speculation about what linguistic structures might be 3: Ash Asudeh: The unrealized and the unheard Part II: Constructions and agreement in a modular architecture 4: Bozhil Hristov: An LFG analysis of AANN constructions: 'A staggering ten doctoral dissertations' 5: Louisa Sadler: On the construct state in Arabic 6: Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King: Agreement in Urdu adjectival adverbials 7: Peter Hurst and Rachel Nordlinger: An LFG approach to Icelandic reciprocal constructions Part III: Argument structure and grammatical functions 8: Annie Zaenen and Elisabet Engdahl: Four Swedish verbs and a functional distinction 9: Helge Lødrup: Deagentivizing Norwegian verbs with reflexive and body part objects 10: Ida Toivonen: Perception verbs, copy raising, and evidentiality in Swedish and English 11: Charlotte Hemmings: Subjects in Austronesian: Evidence from Kelabit 12: I Wayan Arka: Pivot and puzzling relativization in Indonesian Part IV: Categories: Synchrony and diachrony 13: Adam Przepiórkowski and Agnieszka Patejuk: Coordinate structures without syntactic categories 14: Kersti Börjars and John Payne: Decategorialization and Chinese nouns 15: Nigel Vincent: The 'of' word Part V: Representations beyond syntax 16: Oleg Belyaev: Paradigm structure influences syntactic behaviour: Ossetic case inflection 17: Louise Mycock, Chenzi Xu, and Aditi Lahiri: 'Wh'-question intonation in Standard Colloquial Bengali: An LFG analysis 18: Dick Crouch and Aikaterini-Lida Kalouli: Collectivist semantics 19: Andrew Kehler: Asymmetric anaphoric dependencies determine available readings for VP-ellipsis 20: Jamie Y. Findlay: Meaning in LFG
About the Author :
I Wayan Arka is Professor in Linguistics at The Australian National University and Universitas Udayana. His research interests include descriptive, theoretical, and typological linguistics, with areal focus on the Austronesian and Papuan languages of Indonesia. His research examines the interfaces of morphology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics framed in a larger socio-cultural context. His current projects include the Enggano Project and the
ethnobiological-linguistic documentation of Marori. He has carried out extensive linguistic fieldwork and organized capacity building/advocacy programs for minority language communities in Indonesia. Ash Asudeh is a
Professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Director of the Center for Language Sciences at the University of Rochester. He has previously held positions at the University of Oxford and Carleton University, with which he remains affiliated. His research interests include syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language and logic/computation, and cognitive science. His publications include The Logic of Pronominal Resumption (OUP, 2012), Lexical-Functional Syntax (with Joan
Bresnan, Ida Toivonen, and Stephen Wechsler; Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), and Enriched Meanings (with Gianluca Giorgolo; OUP, 2020).
Tracy Holloway King is a principal scientist at Adobe, focusing on search and natural language processing. She has a PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University, where her dissertation was on how word order encodes discourse functions in Russian. She began her career in Xerox PARC's Natural Language Theory and Technology group, focusing on the implementation of broad coverage grammars in Lexical Functional Grammar. She then shifted her focus to search relevance and short text processing
working at Microsoft Bing, eBay's Search Science team, Amazon's product search team, and now Adobe.
