Lexical functional grammar

Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is a constraint-based grammar framework in theoretical linguistics. It posits several parallel levels of syntactic structure, including 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 with morphology and semantics. There has been little LFG work on phonology (although ideas from optimality theory have recently been popular in LFG research). Some recent work combines LFG with Distributed Morphology in Lexical-Realizational Functional Grammar.^[1]^[2]^[3]

^ Paul B. Melchin, Ash Asudeh & Dan Siddiqi (2020). Ojibwe agreement in Lexical-Realizational Functional Grammar. In Miriam Butt and Ida Toivonen, eds., Proceedings of the LFG20 Conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 268–288.
^ Michael Everdell, Paul B. Melchin, Ash Asudeh & Daniel Siddiqi (2021). Beyond c-structure and f-structure: On the argument-adjunct distinction in O’dam. In Miriam Butt, Jamie Y. Findlay and Ida Toivonen, eds., Proceedings of the LFG21 Conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 125-145.
^ Ash Asudeh, Paul B. Melchin & Daniel Siddiqi (2021). Constraints all the way down: DM in a representational model of grammar. In WCCFL 39 Proceedings. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.