Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 33

(18) a. Open the doorl·^1

b. / expected to find someone mowing the lawn, and mowing the

lawn was John.

c. Q: Who mowed the lawn?

:  did.

In an imperative the subject is omitted, leaving the verb plus its object, a
VP-like grouping. In information structure terms, unless there is contras­
tive stress on one of the elements, the whole utterance is in the AFD of the
utterance, and it corresponds to the AFD of a predicate focus construction.
In the other constructions, the "VP" is overtly established in the discourse
as topical; in (18b) the "VP" is fronted in a presentational construction,
while in (18c) it is replaced by do (18c) in a narrow focus construction with
a focal subject. In order to describe these constructions in RRG, the post­
ulation of a VP-like category in the LSC is unnecessary; the projection
grammar representation of the LSC plus focus structure provides the basis
for an explanatory representation.

3. Lexical representation and semantic roles

3.1 General considerations

The lexicon has become a major component of most contemporary syntac­

tic theories; it is no longer "an appendix of the grammar, a list of basic

irregularities." (Bloomfield 1933:274) The role of the lexicon differs from

theory to theory; in LFG, for example, it plays a central role, with many of

the phenomena described by syntactic rules in other theories treated as

operations on lexical forms in the lexicon, while in GPSG it plays a very

minor role, with the phenomena handled by lexical rules in LFG dealt with

by syntactic operations. Given that grammatical generalizations are now

stated both in the syntax and in the lexicon, the system of lexical represen­

tation that a theory uses has a profound effect on the type and nature of the

generalizations that may be stated in terms of it. RRG differs from all var­

ieties of generative grammar by employing a richer system of lexical rep­

resentation, one that is considerably more complex than the usual arbitrary

list of thematic relations. It will be seen that this is the only theory in which

the assignment of thematic relations to a verb is independently motivated.