Mapping theory without argument structure

Abstract

Asudeh and Giorgolo (2012) offer an analysis of optional and derived arguments that does away with argument structure as a separate level of representation within the architecture of Lexical Functional Grammar in favour of encoding much of this information in a connected semantic structure. This simplifies the architecture in many ways, but leaves open the question of the mapping between thematic roles, arguments, and grammatical functions (traditionally explored under the umbrella of Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT: Bresnan and Kanerva 1989)). In this paper, I offer some attempt to formalise these mapping relations, drawing on a modern reanalysis of traditional LMT (Kibort 2007), while also continuing Asudeh and Giorgolo’s (2012) quest to evacuate as much information as possible out of individual lexical entries and into cross-categorising templates (Dalrymple et al. 2004; Crouch et al. 2012).