Lexical Functional Grammar
Carol Neidle, Boston University
The term Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) first appeared in print in the 1982 volume edited by
Joan Bresnan: The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, the culmination of many years
of research. LFG differs from both transformational grammar and relational grammar in assuming
a single level of syntactic structure. LFG rejects syntactic movement of constituents as the
mechanism by which the surface syntactic realization of arguments is determined, and it disallows
alteration of grammatical relations within the syntax. A unique constituent structure,
corresponding to the superficial phrase structure tree, is postulated. This is made possible by an
enriched lexical component that accounts for regularities in the possible mappings of arguments
into syntactic structures. For example, the alternation in the syntactic position in which the logical
object (theme argument) appears in corresponding active and passive sentences has been viewed by
many linguists as fundamentally syntactic in nature, resulting, within transformational grammar,
from syntactic movement of constituents. However, LFG eliminates the need for a multi-level
syntactic representation by allowing for such alternations to be accomplished through regular,
universally constrained, productive lexical processes that determine multiple sets of associations of
arguments (such as agent, theme) with grammatical functions (such as SUBJECT, OBJECT)—
considered within this framework to be primitives—which then map directly into the syntax.