Argument Realization (Studies in Constraint-Based Lexicalism)

In this book, Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King present seven essays that survey fundamental argument realization issues within a typologically broad range of languages. In these papers, Butt, King, and other prominent linguists examine within the architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) the variety of ways in which arguments of a predicate may be realized in the syntax. Well-suited for this kind of examination, LFG allows for the complex interaction of arguments, syntactic positions, and grammatical functions.

Case marking alternations and the overt realization of case marking within single clauses, including case stacking, have continued to engage the attention of linguists working with different syntactic theories. The phenomenon of clause union or complex predication has led linguists to look at case marking and argument realization that goes beyond the domain of the single clause. Regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the predicational structure of a clause, the papers included in this volume show how the relationship between arguments and their overt realization can be dealt with.

These papers also treat multiple case marking in Australian languages, possessor alternation in Welsh, directional complex predicates in American Indian languages, and causatives in Japanese. Furthermore, they discuss representational issues that encompass underspecification and the encoding of semantic information needed to determine the correspondence of thematic arguments to their overt syntactic realization.

Miriam Butt is professor for general and computational linguistics at the University of Konstanz.