SE-LFG31 (5 February 2022, Oxford)

31st South of England LFG Meeting

The 31st South of England LFG Meeting, a student-orented meeting for presentations and discussion of various topics from an LFG perspective, will be held on 5 February 2022 at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford from 1:00-4:30 PM. Contact Joey Lovestrand with any questions (jl119@soas.ac.uk).

Meeting agenda:

1:00 - 1:45 Wilson Lui

Scene(s) and Topic in Cantonese: An Information Structure Proposal

Abstract: This talk presents an account of ‘topic’ and ‘multiple topic’ constructions in Cantonese under the information structure within LFG. Three functions are proposed: scene (Andréasson, 2007), topic, and focus. The analysis involves reassessing the current understanding of information structure in ‘topic-prominent’ languages (Li & Thompson, 1976) and overcoming the deficiencies under the current cartographic approach (see eg Badan & del Gobbo, 2010).

1:45 - 2:30 Chit Fung Lam (Lawrence)

Re-thinking Two “Restructuring” Phenomena in Parallel Constraint-based Model

Abstract: In GB/Minimalist research, control constructions are typically characterised as biclausal configurations with the embedded complement projecting up to clausal CP or TP. On the other hand, certain control predicates in cross-linguistic research are reported to “restructure” the constructions into monoclausal configurations (see e.g., Cinque, 2006; Wurmbrand, 2001, 2004, 2015). In this talk, I focus on two phenomena in Mandarin Chinese, namely “Aspectual Lowering” and “Inner Topicalisation”, which have been analysed by past studies (e.g., Grano, 2012, 2015; N. Huang, 2018) as involving restructuring. In this talk, I first adopt a range of linguistic diagnostics – from semantic to clausehood diagnostics – to evaluate claims of clausal restructuring for these two phenomena. Then, I will provide a formal account within LFG’s parallel constraint-based model, which I argue will better capture the empirical observations of these two phenomena.

2:30 - 2:45 Tea Break

2:45 - 3:30 Toby S. Lowther

Symmetric object languages and the OBJ function in Lexical-Functional Grammar

Standard LFG analyses assign the internal arguments of a verb to either the OBJ function or one of the members of the set of OBJ-theta functions. This analysis presupposes some degree of syntactic asymmetry between arguments, and so symmetric object languages like Moro pose a problem – either assign arguments to syntactic categories based on purely semantic criteria, or violate wellformedness principles (Consistency). I present an alternative analysis utilising a set-valued OBJ function, which can account for symmetric, asymmetric, and partially-symmetric object languages. I will then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal against previous proposals in the field.

3:30 - 4:15 Setayesh Dashti

Title

Abstract

4:15 - 4:30 Planning the next SE-LFG meeting