Multiword expressions and lexicalism: the view from LFG

Jamie Y. Findlay


Abstract
Multiword expressions (MWEs) pose a problem for lexicalist theories like Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), since they are prima facie counterexamples to a strong form of the lexical integrity principle, which entails that a lexical item can only be realised as a single, syntactically atomic word. In this paper, I demonstrate some of the problems facing any strongly lexicalist account of MWEs, and argue that the lexical integrity principle must be weakened. I conclude by sketching a formalism which integrates a Tree Adjoining Grammar into the LFG architecture, taking advantage of this relaxation.
Anthology ID:
W17-1709
Volume:
Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2017)
Month:
April
Year:
2017
Address:
Valencia, Spain
Editors:
Stella Markantonatou, Carlos Ramisch, Agata Savary, Veronika Vincze
Venue:
MWE
SIG:
SIGLEX
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
73–79
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W17-1709
DOI:
10.18653/v1/W17-1709
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Jamie Y. Findlay. 2017. Multiword expressions and lexicalism: the view from LFG. In Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2017), pages 73–79, Valencia, Spain. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Multiword expressions and lexicalism: the view from LFG (Findlay, MWE 2017)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/W17-1709.pdf