Anke Lenzing
2. Argument structure in LFG
The question as to what kind of linguistic representation of a-structure the L2 learner can make recourse to at the L2 initial state is naturally related to the ques-tion of how a-structure is conceptualised in a fully developed mental grammati-cal system. In order to get a complete picture of the constraints at the level of a-structure proposed in this paper, it is important to gain insights into the full representation of a-structure as well as the mapping principles guiding the process of the alignment of semantic and syntactic information in LFG.
A central component of LFG is its projection architecture with three indepen-dent levels of linguistic representation that exist in parallel and are related to each other by specific linking or mapping principles. The three levels are functional structure (f-structure), constituent structure (c-structure) and argument structure (a-structure). In f-structure, universal aspects of grammar are encoded; it contains grammatical functions, such as subject or object. The second level that represents syntactic concepts is c-structure. It is at this level that the surface syntactic organ-isation of phrases is represented (cf. Dalrymple 2001: 45), i.e. the structural rela-tions between the words that make up a sentence are depicted in terms of phrase structure trees. In contrast to f-structure, c-structure is language-specific. As the main focus of this paper is on the development of a-structure, this concept will be explained in more detail.
The development of argument structure in the initial L2 mental grammatical system 5 Following Bresnan (2001: 304), a-structure is composed of a semantic and a syntactic side.1 At the semantic side, the core participants in events are encoded which are defined by the respective predicator. The syntactic side contains specific syntactic features that are essential to map the arguments in a-structure onto the grammatical functions in f-structure. Following Bresnan (2001: 307) a-structure encompasses the following information:
– the predicator and its corresponding argument roles
– the hierarchical ordering of the thematic roles according to their prominence – the syntactic features which are necessary to map arguments onto
grammati-cal functions
The following examples serve to illustrate these three types of information.
(1) place 〈x y z 〉
(agent) (theme) (locative)
[-o] [-r] [-o]
John placed the plate on the table.
(2) hit 〈x y〉
(agent) (patient)
[-o] [-r]
The girl hit the boy.
(3) freeze 〈x〉
(theme)
[-r]
Mary freezes. (Adapted and modified from Bresnan 2001: 307) The ordering of the thematic roles in a-structure is based on the notion of a uni-versal hierarchy of thematic roles which descends from agent to locative. The hier-archy is ordered from left to right reflecting the prominence of the respective roles.
(4) Thematic Hierarchy:
Agent>beneficiary>experiencer/goal>instrument>patient/theme>locative
(cf. Bresnan 2001: 307)
Applied to the examples above, this means that the (x) argument in (1) and (2) takes the role of the agent, which is the most prominent role of the predicators ‘place’
and ‘hit’ (and is realised as ‘John’ and ‘the girl’ respectively). The (y) argument in Example (1) corresponds to the role of theme (‘the plate’) and in (2) it takes the role
1. Within the framework of LFG, there are different views on both amount and type of semantic information encoded at the level of a-structure. For an account of different concep-tions of a-structure than the one presented here, see for instance Falk (2001) or Fabri (2008).
6 Anke Lenzing
of patient (‘the boy’). In Example (1), the locative role is represented by (z) (‘on the table’), which is ordered to the right of (y), as the locative is the least prominent role in the thematic hierarchy. Finally, the most prominent role of the predicator ‘freeze’
is represented by (x) and takes the role of theme (‘Mary’) (cf. Bresnan 2001: 307).
As for the semantic side of a-structure, all (x) arguments represent the most prominent semantic roles of the respective predicators. However, these arguments differ in terms of their syntactic properties. These syntactic differences of the (x) arguments are captured by the syntactic side of a-structure, specifically by the syntactic features encoded in a-structure. These syntactic features constrain the mapping process of the thematic roles in a-structure onto the argument functions in f-structure.
The mapping principles from a-structure to f-structure are spelled out in detail in Lexical Mapping Theory (Bresnan & Kanerva 1989; Bresnan 2001). A core idea underlying Lexical Mapping Theory is that certain thematic roles are restricted as to the grammatical functions they can be mapped onto and that certain grammati-cal functions can only be filled by a restricted type of thematic roles. This observa-tion led to the classificaobserva-tion of the basic argument funcobserva-tions SUBJ, OBJ, OBLθ and OBJθ according to the features [±-r] (thematically unrestricted or not) and [±o]
(objective or not):
(5) Feature Decomposition of Argument Functions
–r +r
–o subj oblθ
+o obj objθ (taken from Bresnan 2001: 308)
The features [+r] and [-r] indicate whether a syntactic function is restricted in terms of its thematic role. Both SUBJ and OBJ function are not restricted as regards the thematic role they can take and therefore, they are classified as [-r].
However, this is not the case for OBLθ and OBJθ. These two functions are restricted to specific thematic roles and are therefore classified as [+r]. The features [+o] and [-o] refer to objective and non-objective syntactic functions. OBJ and OBJθ are both object functions and are therefore classified as [+o]. As SUBJ and OBLθ are not object-type functions, they are classified as [-o].
The question of whether a-structure is universal or whether it also exhibits language-specific aspects is not explicitly resolved in the LFG literature. In Lenzing (2013), I hypothesise that a-structure contains both universal and language- specific components. In particular, I argue that the argument roles themselves, their hierarchical ordering and their syntactic classification are universal, whereas the actual arguments that the respective predicators take are language-specific.
The development of argument structure in the initial L2 mental grammatical system 7 The three levels of representation outlined above do not only model different aspects of grammar and exhibit specific properties; in keeping with the projec-tional architecture of LFG, they are furthermore related to each other by specific mapping principles (Bresnan 2001: 20). As the focus of this paper is the develop-ment of a-structure, the mapping principles underlying a-to f-structure mapping as conceptualised in Lexical Mapping Theory are of particular relevance and are therefore briefly outlined below.
Following Bresnan & Kanerva (1989), there are three lexical mapping prin-ciples that relate the thematic roles encoded in the semantic side of a-structure to the syntactic features in the syntactic side:
a. Intrinsic role classifications b. Morpholexical operations c. Default classifications
Firstly, intrinsic role classifications relate the intrinsic properties of thematic roles to specific syntactic functions. The agent encoding principle states that the intrinsic value of the role agent is constrained to [-o]. The theme encoding principle con-strains the intrinsic value of the patient/theme role to [-r] which results in the patient/theme being realised as either subject or object. The third principle, the locative encoding principle, ensures that the locative receives the feature [-o] and is realised as subject or oblique. These classifications are considered to be universal and therefore they apply cross-linguistically (cf. Bresnan & Kanerva 1989: 26).
Secondly, morpholexical operations add or suppress thematic roles in lexical argument structure. This is for instance the case in the passive, where a morpho-lexical operation leads to the suppression of the logical subject (i.e. the agent), so that the unrestricted patient is mapped onto the SUBJ function instead. This is illustrated in Figure 1 below:
f-structure: S
The piano was played.
a-structure: played <x
[-o]
Ø y>
[-r]
Figure 1. Morpholexical operations in passives
In a final step, default classifications apply once the argument structure has been built up in a morpholexical fashion. These classifications ensure that the high-est thematic role is assigned the SUBJ function and that all other roles that are
Anke Lenzing
lower in the hierarchy are assigned non-subject functions (cf. Bresnan & Kanerva 1989: 27). It should be noted at this point that, “all default classifications apply to a role only if it is not already specified for an incompatible value of the default feature” (Bresnan & Kanerva 1989: 28).
The following two wellformedness conditions on lexical form further con-strain the mapping process from a- to f-structure:
Function-Argument Bi-uniqueness:
Each a-structure role must be associated with a unique function, and conversely.
The Subject Condition:
Every predicator must have a subject. (Bresnan 2001: 311) The instantiation of both mapping principles and wellformedness conditions is illustrated below with the example of ‘place’ as in ‘John placed the plate on the table’.
place < x y z >
(agent) (theme) (locative)
[-o] [-r] [-o] intrinsic role classification [-r] [+r] default classification
SUBJ SUBJ/OBJ OBLθ
OBJ Function/arg. biuniqueness
John placed the plate on the table Figure 2. Principles and constraints in a- to f-structure mapping
As shown in Figure 2, the verb ‘place’ takes three arguments. In a first step, the intrinsic role classification assigns the agent (‘John’) the feature [-o]. The theme (‘the plate’) is classified as [-r] and the locative (‘on the table’) as [-o].
In a next step, the default classification assigns the feature [-r] to the agent role and the feature [+r] to the locative. In a final step, the Function-Argument Bi-uniqueness condition applies which specifies that the theme is mapped onto the OBJ function.
In sum, the principles of Lexical Mapping Theory specify the selection of grammatical functions in f-structure on the basis of the classification of the argu-ments in a-structure. In this way, the theory accounts for the mapping process from a-structure to f-structure in a precisely defined way.
After having summarised the core premises of argument structure and Lexical Mapping Theory in LFG, I now turn to a brief overview of the mapping processes in PT.
The development of argument structure in the initial L2 mental grammatical system 9