Preserving grammatical functions in LFG

Abstract

Patejuk and Przepiórkowski (2016) have provided arguments and evidence to call into question the traditional role that named grammatical functions have played in the descriptions and representations of Lexical Functional Grammar. They propose reducing the number of distinguished function names to a much more limited set. In this brief paper I examine a few of their observations and find them not yet convincing enough to justify such a fundamental revision of LFG theory. I am also concerned that a less refined structure at the interface between syntax and semantics will only shift to the semantic interpretation component the descriptive and explanatory burden of interpreting idiosyncratic morphosyntactic properties. I conclude that most if not all grammatical function distinctions should be preserved in LFG functional structures.