Anna Siewierska
Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
In FG it is assumed that verbal cross-referencing forms are the realizations of the verb's arguments. The independent pronouns or nominals which may co-occur with the cross-referencing forms are in turn considered to be in a sort of appositional relationship to the cross-referencing forms. In Dik (1989) such an analysis is advocated not only for the cross-referencing forms found in the typical head-marking languages of North America or Australia but also for the bound person forms of what are generally considered to be dependent-marking languages such as Latin, Spanish or Polish.
The present paper examines the rationale for the argument status of cross-referencing forms given in FG and also in other theoretical frameworks, e.g. Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan and Mchombo 1987), Relational Grammar (Blake 1983) and Government and Binding (Jelinek 1984) and identifies a number of problems posed by such an analysis. The problems in question include: the exact grammatical status of the independent forms, the behavioural properties of arguments vs adjuncts and of different types of adjuncts, the principles determining the overt morphological marking of the independent forms, discrepancies between the marking of independent forms and the cross-referencing forms, the source of potential gender or class marking of the cross-referencing forms and definiteness contrasts between the free forms and the cross-referencing forms.
While some of the above issues may find an adequate resolution within the context of FG, it is argued that most either disappear or can be handled better under an "agreement" as opposed to "argument" analysis of the cross-referencing forms. It is also argued that even if the pronominal argument analysis is maintained for some languages, those of the radically head-marking type, there are no convincing grounds for extending it to dependent-marking languages such as Latin.
References:
Blake, B. (1983). Structure and word order in Kalkatungu: the anatomy of a flat language. Australian Journal of Linguistics 3. 143-175.
Bresnan, J. and S.A. Mchombo (1987). Topic, pronoun and agreement in Chichewa. Language 63. 741-782.
Dik, S. C. (1989). The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1. Dordrecht: Foris.
Jelinek, E. (1984). Empty categories and non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2. 39-76.