Author: Her, One-Soon and Hui-Ting Huang

Date: Dec 22, 1998

Title: LOCATIVE INVERSION: ENGLISH, CHINESE, AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Email: osh@nccu.edu.tw

Format: Microsoft Word 97

Remark: Selected Papers from the Second International Symposium on Languages in Taiwan, H. Huang (ed.), pp.287-304, Taipei: National Taiwan University 

Abstract: This paper gives a formal account of locative inversion constructions in English and Chinese within a revised Lexical Mapping Theory of Lexical Functional Grammar as a model of Universal Grammar.  We propose that the inversion construction be accounted for with a relation-changing morphological operation, rather than with intrinsic role classifications (Lin 1990, Chang 1990) or universal default syntactic specifications (Bresnan and Kanerva 1989, Bresnan 1989).  This strategy we employ maintains the maximum universality of the overall lexical mapping framework while accounting for language-specific constructions and alternations.