Gender Representation in the Lexical Functional Grammar

Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State ,Kparou, Hanoukoume Cyril

doi:10.47191/ijmra/v4-i10-12

Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State , Kparou, Hanoukoume Cyril

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.47191/ijmra/v4-i10-12

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Abstract

Gender marking is a language universal, although some languages have a stronger Gender-marking grammar. The Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a linguistic theory, has a set of rules and levels to render for Gender marking. Bornee and developed within the larger framework of the Generative Grammar, the Lexical Functional Grammar has become a standalone autonomous theoretical theory. This paper draws data from French language to present a comprehensive development of Gender-marking analysis within the Lexical Functional Grammar Framework. Fundamentally, the LSG posits for four phrase structures, which are the C-structure representing lexical entries, the F-structure, which deals with the functional information, the A-structure, which structures predicate-argument relationships, and the ơ-structure, which handles semantic representations. Although the grammatical gender is arrayed all over the four structures, it is mainly presented in this paper as a feature in the lexicon, typically integrated in the C-structure and F-structure mapping.

Highlights

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR LFGThe Lexical Functional Grammar has grown out of Chomsky’s Lectures on Government and Binding (1981) alongside the Minimalist Program (MP)
Many central questions stipulated by Chomsky (1981) are relevant in the LFG: What is knowledge of language? What does a speaker do when he speaks? How is language acquired? What is the relationship between language and knowledge? What is common to natural languages? What diversifies natural languages? The LFG is borne of the initiative of Joan Bresnan, a linguist, assisted by the psychologist Ron Kaplan
Their cumulated efforts resulted in a publication in 1982 entitled Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal System for Grammatical Representation

Summary

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR LFG

The Lexical Functional Grammar has grown out of Chomsky’s Lectures on Government and Binding (1981) alongside the Minimalist Program (MP). The LFG is borne of the initiative of Joan Bresnan, a linguist, assisted by the psychologist Ron Kaplan. Their cumulated efforts resulted in a publication in 1982 entitled Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal System for Grammatical Representation. In that book and further writings, they posit that language is lexical-based, constraint-based and non-transformational (see Dalrymple 2009, Bresnan 1995). “A central idea of Lexical-Functional Grammar is that different kinds of linguistic information are modelled by distinct, simultaneously present grammatical modules, each having its own formal representation” (Asudeh &Toivonen 2009: 3). The LFG has preserved the general phrase structure of X-bare theory, one of the core values of the Principles and Parameters, the former version of the Minimalist Program.

La fille est gentille

GND MASC

CONCLUSIONS