Kopfbild

Flexible phrasal constructions, constituent structure and (cross-linguistic) generalizations: A discussion of template-based phrasal LFG approaches

Author: Stefan Müller

Subject Areas: syntax, lexicalism, construction, passive, coordination, extraction, generalization, resultative construction, benefactive construction, English, German, LFG

This paper appeared in Doug Arnold, Miriam Butt, Berthold Crysmann, Tracy Holloway King, Stefan Müller (Eds): Proceedings of the Joint 2016 Conference on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical Functional Grammar, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, 457–477. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show that neither resultative nor benefactive constructions are fully fixed and that this flexibility requires traces or a stipulation of constructional templates at several unrelated places in the grammar, something that is not necessary in lexical approaches. A second part of the paper deals with the active/passive alternation and shows that language-internal generalizations are missed if constraints are assumed to be contributed by phrase structure rules. A third part examines the parallel constructions in German and shows that cross-linguistic generalizations are not captured by phrasal approaches.