Describing syntactic structures

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how to formulate descriptions of and constraints on c-structure, f-structure, and the relation between them. We show how these constraints, which are a part of the formal architecture of LFG theory, are important in the statement of universal typological generalizations about linguistic structure. A formal linguistic theory such as LFG must provide efficient and transparent ways of stating linguistic facts and generalizations clearly and precisely, in a way that is conducive to a solid understanding of the linguistic structures that are described and how they are related. Section 5.1 focuses on constituent structure rules, Section 5.2 on functional constraints, and Section 5.3 on the correspondence between c-structure and f-structure. The kind of variability that LFG predicts is illustrated in Section 5.4 by examining simple structures in four typologically different languages.