Extending the Applicability of Lexical Mapping Theory

Abstract

LFG grants syntactic functions a central role and has developed a theory of argument structure, Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT), which is independent of phrase-structure trees and thus able to account for morpholexical derivations. Yet some fundamental phenomena falling within the scope of morpholexical analysis – such as morphosemantic (meaning-altering) operations, phenomena referred to elsewhere as ‘demotions’, or subjectlessness –are currently denied satisfactory LMT accounts. This paper offers a way of extending LMT to phenomena which are awkward or impossible to handle with the current widely accepted versions of LMT.

While retaining the main component of LMT – the feature decomposition of syntactic functions – I suggest the following set of revisions: (1) restoring the early LFG distinction between argument positions and semantic roles; (2) allowing the semantic participants to change order and re-associate with different argument positions for non-default (morphosemantically altered) mappings; (3) fixing the order of (syntactic) argument positions; (4) reformulating the principles of argument-to-function mapping to make fuller use of the markedness hierarchy of syntactic functions and render the Subject Condition redundant; and (5) using a mechanism of increasing markedness to account for morphosyntactic operations referred to as ‘demotions’ in RG. I demonstrate that these revisions make LMT a cleaner formalism which is immediately applicable to some important phenomena that have so far escaped (good) analyses.

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