Lexical Functional Grammar

2. WHAT IS LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR?
• LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (LFG) IS A CONSTRAINT-BASED GRAMMAR FRAMEWORK IN
THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS. IT POSITS TWO SEPARATE LEVELS OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE, A PHRASE
STRUCTURE GRAMMAR REPRESENTATION OF WORD ORDER AND CONSTITUENCY, AND A REPRESENTATION
OF GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS SUCH AS SUBJECT AND OBJECT, SIMILAR TO DEPENDENCY GRAMMAR.
• THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY WAS INITIATED BY JOAN BRESNAN AND RONALD KAPLAN IN THE
1970S, IN REACTION TO THE THEORY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR WHICH WAS CURRENT IN THE
LATE 1970S. IT MAINLY FOCUSES ON SYNTAX, INCLUDING ITS RELATION TO MORPHOLOGY AND
SEMANTICS. THERE HAS BEEN LITTLE LFG WORK ON PHONOLOGY (ALTHOUGH IDEAS FROM OPTIMALITY
THEORY HAVE RECENTLY BEEN POPULAR IN LFG RESEARCH).
•

4. IN TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR, THERE ARE 10
PARTS OF SPEECH:
•NUMBER
•ARTICLE
•PREPOSITION
•CONJUNCTION
•INTERJECTION
•NOUN
•VERB
•ADJECTIVE
•ADVERB
•PRONOUN

5. Then each of these ten classes can be divided into subcategories based on their
functions. In functional grammar, these classes of words do not disappear.
However, functional grammar places English words into four big groups:
 Noun group
 Verb group
 Adjective group
 Prepositional group

7. In addition, traditional grammar analyzes a sentence structure into subject,
predicate, object, attributive, adverbial, and complement, while functional
grammar gives a clause different functional labels depending on three kinds of
meta-functions.
From these two examples, we can see that functional grammar has its own
characteristics. To serve its communicative purpose, its concepts are quite
different from traditional grammar. Based on current books on functional
grammar, its key concepts include functions and systems, hierarchical ranking
of units, word order, word groups, functions of the sentence, theme, mood,
transitivity, and the clause complex.

8. What are lexical and functional phrases?

9. Lexical words all have clear meanings that you
could describe to someone. They’re also all
nouns, which is one type of lexical word.
Functional, or grammatical, words are the ones
that it’s hard to define their meaning, but they
have some grammatical function in the
sentence.

10. What’s the difference between lexical and
grammatical?

11. Lexical meaning is dominant in content words,
whereas grammatical meaning is dominant in
function words, but in neither is grammatical
meaning absent. Grammatical words include
prepositions, modals and auxiliary verbs,
pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and some
adverbs.

12. What are the structures of
Lexical Functional Grammar?

13. Lexical Functional Grammar views language as being
made up of multiple dimensions of structure. Each of
these dimensions is represented as a distinct structure
with its own rules, concepts, and form. The primary
structures that have figured in LFG research are:
• The representation of grammatical functions (f-
structure).
• The structure of syntactic constituents (c-structure).

14. For example, in the sentence The old woman eats the falafel, the
c-structure analysis is that this is a sentence which is made up
of two pieces, a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP). The VP
is itself made up of two pieces, a verb (V) and another NP. The NPs
are also analyzed into their parts. Finally, the bottom of the
structure is composed of the words out of which the sentence is
constructed. The f-structure analysis, on the other hand, treats
the sentence as being composed of attributes, which include
features such as number and tense or functional units such as
subject, predicate, or object.

15. There are other structures that are hypothesized in LFG work:
• Argument structure (a-structure), a level that represents the
number of arguments for a predicate and some aspects of the
lexical semantics of these arguments. See theta-role.
• Semantic structure (s-structure), a level that represents the
meaning of phrases and sentences. See Glue Semantics.
• Information structure (i-structure)
• Morphological structure (m-structure)
• Phonological structure (p-structure)

16. How are lexical rules written?

17. A lexical rule is in a form of syntactic rule
used within many theories of natural
language syntax. These rules alter the
argument structures of lexical items (for
example verbs and declensions) in order to
alter their combinatory properties.

18. Lexical rules affect in particular specific word
classes and morphemes. Moreover, they may
have exceptions, do not apply across word
boundaries, and can only apply to underlying
forms.

19. An example of a lexical rule in spoken English is
the deletion of /n/. This rule applies in damn and
autumn, but not in hymnal. Because the rule of n-
deletion apparently needs information about the
grammatical status of the word, it can only be
lexical.

20. What is the difference between lexical class and functional class?
 Lexical words include things like nouns and
verbs and are generally the open-class items in
the language. These are words that can be
easily added to the language, e.g., Selfie.
 It is considered that one of the important
properties of these functional categories that
determine the difference between grammars of
different languages.
 Words that belong to lexical categories are
semantically rich and contribute primarily to
the meaning of the sentence.
 Functional items are generally closed-class
words. Words in these categories have strict
grammatical functions which generally cannot
have new words added.
 Categories that express content (Nouns, Verbs,
Adjective, Adverbs)
 Categories that connect the sentence together.
(Articles, Prepositions, Pronounces etc…)

21. Five types of Lexical Verbs?

22. 1.Linking Verbs
2. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
3. Regular and Irregular Main Verbs
4. Dynamic and Static Main Verbs
5. Auxiliary Verbs
Five types of Lexical Verbs?

23. 1. Linking Verbs
Linking verbs connects both the subject and the
adjective/ information. Linking verbs often depict states
of being or something at the moment. Here’s an example:
“The water became yellow.” In this case, became is the
linking verb because it connects the description (yellow)
back to the subject (water). Other instances of linking
verbs include appear, remain, and to be.

24. 2. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
A transitive verb denotes action towards a direct
object receiving that action. On the other hand,
Intransitive verbs express action but don’t affect a
direct object. An example of the transitive verb is "Kim
walks to church". Walks is the lexical verb of the
sentence and is transitive. "Kim dances", is an example
of an intransitive verb because dances is the lexical
verb here not directed towards a direct object.

25. 3. Regular and Irregular Main Verbs
The difference between regular and irregular verbs is the way their
ending changes when they turn to the past tense. Regular verbs in
the past tense often end with -ed. Irregular verbs don’t change
similarly.
For example, if we change the tense of this sentence "She bakes a
cake" to past tense, the sentence would become "She baked cake".
Where, for irregular verb the sentence "Jhonny catches the ball"
would be changed to "Jhonny caught the ball". Thereby 'Bake' is a
regular verb and 'Catch' is an example of an irregular verb.

26. 4. Dynamic and Static Main Verbs
Dynamic verbs simply express action. For example,
"Maria's tire busted". Here, the verb busted was an action.
Where on the other side, static verbs describe a situation
or state rather than an action. Prefer, surprise, and include
are examples of static verbs. For example, “The busted tire
scared Maria.” In this case, scared describes how the tire
affects Maria more than what it physically does

27. 5. Auxiliary Verbs
Auxiliary verbs help lexical verbs sometimes to
express degrees of time and mood. But the auxiliary
verbs are considered lexical verbs. Will, might, can,
and need are all comes under the category of
helping verbs. In the sentence, “I might go out,”
might is the helping verb. It adds intensity to the
lexical verb, go.