Unification Grammars as a Frame for the Lexical-Functional Grammars Cover Image

Unifikacijske gramatike kao okvir za leksičko-funkcionalnu gramatiku (LFG)
Unification Grammars as a Frame for the Lexical-Functional Grammars

Author(s): Sanja Seljan
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Hrvatsko filološko društvo
Keywords: grammatical functions; unification grammars; lexical-functional grammar; Croatian

Summary/Abstract: Unification Grammars use the knowledge from the field of linguistics, informatics, logic and mathematics, as well as the operation of unification in order to achieve unification and to import the elements from the context. The name Lexical-Functional Grammar discovers the difference from other grammars: linguistic phenomena are analyzed through grammatical functions and represented in the lexicon, unifying in that way morphological, lexical, syntactic and semantic levels. What reasons have influenced development of Unification Grammars, and the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) especially? In what way the LFG could be used to represent the Croatian language? Most of formal descriptions are related to the English, and some to German, French and Italian. How to represent the languages with rich morphological system and relatively free word order, as the Croatian? These are some of the questions that I will try to answer. After introduction, I will say something about development of Unification Grammars and the basic principle of unification, then about the Lexical-Functional Grammar and its application to the Croatian language.

  • Issue Year: 1999
  • Issue No: 47-48
  • Page Range: 181-193
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Croatian