Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

500 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR. & DAVID P. WILKINS

from Dowty's (1979) elaboration of Vendler's (1967) verb classification

scheme and leading to a richer, more detailed system of predicate represen­

tation using a semantic metalanguage derived from natural language.

This discussion is organized as follows. In section 1 we discuss the var­

ious positions held by major syntactic theories on the role of the lexicon,

the nature of semantic representation and on approaches to complementa­

tion. In section 2 we present the analysis of the English verb remember and

in section 3 the analysis of the verbs in Mparntwe Arrernte which cover the

same semantic space as English remember. Section 4 concludes with the

theoretical implications of this type of analysis.

1. Theoretical background

There are three relevant parameters against which modern theories of syn­

tax can be characterized in the context of this discussion: first, the role of

the lexicon within the theory; second, whether the theory attempts to pre­

dict anything about the syntax on the basis of the lexicon; and third, the

actual position of the theory with regard to semantic decomposition. We

will examine each of these parameters in turn. We will then briefly examine

approaches to the analysis of complementation.

1.1 The role of the lexicon in syntactic theory

While the lexicon has assumed a prominent role in much of the work in syn­

tax and semantics over the past 15 years, its function in particular theories

varies greatly. At one extreme are the theories in which it plays little or no

role, most notably Relational Grammar [RelG] (Perlmutter 1983) and

Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar [GPSG] (Gazdar, et al. 1985),

while at the other extreme lie heavily lexically oriented theories such as

Lexical-Functional Grammar [LFG] (Bresnan 1982) and Head-Driven

Phrase Structure Grammar [HPSG] (Sag & Pollard 1987). RelG employs

only syntactic rules, and these handle the phenomena treated by means of

lexical rules in other theories. GPSG puts subcategorization in the ID rule

component, using the lexicon only for redundancy rules of the type relating

derived nominals to their corresponding verbs. HPSG differs from GPSG in

this respect by eliminating syntactic metarules and expressing their

generalizations through lexical rules. LFG places a wide range of rules and