Updates

The LFG conference in 2003 (sponsored by the State University of New York at Albany, held in Saratoga Springs) marked the 25th birthday of LFG. Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan gave keynote addresses.

For a detailed argument in favor of a parallel architecture by someone who is not a practitioner of LFG, see Jackendoff (2002). He discusses linguistic, psycholinguistic, cognitive, and evolutionary considerations.

A new proposal in the theory of c-structure is the idea that some lexical categories may not project phrasal categories. This idea is presented in Toivonen (2001). An extension of this idea is found in the analysis of Irish complementizers in Asudeh (2002), who proposes that these complementizers are nonprojecting particles which adjoin to I, but the IP headed by this I is then embedded in a CP-C' sequence, resulting in an indirect projection of C to CP.

The universal validity of the constraints on the c-structure-f-structure mapping is as yet unclear. It is argued by Andréasson, Börjars, and Engdahl (2003), for example, that Swedish clause structure violates them. The internal structure of Hebrew NPs in Falk (2001) also violates them.

The "Additional Readings" section of the chapter alludes to the debate over whether auxiliaries have PRED features. For a new answer, namely that some do and others don't, see Falk (2003); but note that, like Falk (1984), the LFG theory of control is necessary to understand it.

For a study of functional control in Norwegian, see Lødrup (2002).

The existence of traces is, as the textbook stresses, a controversial idea in LFG. The textbook mentions Bresnan's argument based on weak crossover effects. An opposing theory of weak crossover, one that does not need traces, has been proposed by Dalrymple, Kaplan, and King (2001). On the other hand, Ørsnes (2002) argues that there is evidence in Danish for the position taken in the textbook.

There has been a lot of work recently on LFG and morphology, mostly attempts to incorporate current theories of realizational morphology into the LFG architecture. There have been several papers on this at recent LFG conferences.

Bibliography

Andréasson, Maia, Kersti Börjars, and Elisabet Engdahl (2003) "Subject and Object Positions in Swedish". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 03 Conference, University at Albany, State University of New York. On-line: CSLI Publications.

Asudeh, Ash (2002) "The Syntax of Preverbal Particles and Adjunction in Irish". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 02 Conference, National Technical University of Athens. On-line: CSLI Publications. pp. 1-18.

Dalrymple, Mary, Ronald Kaplan, and Tracy Holloway King (2001) "Weak Crossover and the Absence of Traces". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 01 Conference, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. On-line: CSLI Publications. pp. 66-82

Falk, Yehuda N. (2001) "Constituent Structure and Grammatical Functions in the Hebrew Action Nominal". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 01 Conference, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. On-line: CSLI Publications. pp. 83-103.

Falk, Yehuda N. (2003) "The English Auxiliary System Revisited". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 03 Conference, University at Albany, State University of New York. On-line: CSLI Publications.

Jackendoff, Ray (2002) Foundations of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lødrup, Helge (2002) "Infinitival Complements and the Form-Function Relation". in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 02 Conference, National Technical University of Athens. On-line: CSLI Publications. pp. 258-273

Ørsnes, Bjarne (2002) "Case Marking and Subject Extraction in Danish" . in Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds., Proceedings of the LFG 02 Conference, National Technical University of Athens. On-line: CSLI Publications. pp. 333-353

Toivonen, Ida (2001) The Phrase-Structure of Non-Projecting Words. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.