A Theory of Predicates

Farrell Ackerman and Gert Webelhuth

Lexicalism is a theory of information associated with words and what exactly a word is. The authors propose a different idea of what can be contained in words. Lexicalism is first and foremost a hypothesis about functional-semantic information and secondarily a hypothesis about the formal expression of this information. Grammar rules cannot change the argument structure of words. Any change to the meaning of words must occur in the lexicon. A new lexical theory of complex predicates is proposed in this volume. The authors argue that previous lexicalist accounts within Lexical Functional Grammar and Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar have abandoned certain crucial aspects of lexicalism in their efforts to account for analytically expressed predicates, in particular permitting predicate formation operations to occur within phrase structure. Although the theory is presented in detail primarily for German expressions of these predicates, consideration is given to cross-linguistic application of this theory.

9/1/97

ISBN (Paperback): 1575860864

ISBN (Cloth): 1575860872

Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Verb Phrase