Practical Grammar 5
Not only verbs have a PRED feature
Last week, we introduced the PRED feature and assigned it to verbs, like the following:
(1) [PRED 'DISAPPEAR<SUBJ>']
(2) [PRED 'SEE<SUBJ, OBJ>']
The PRED feature is discussed at the beginning of section 2.2 in the textbook. There it is described that the value of the PRED feature consists of two pieces of information:
a. a SEMANTIC FORM, and
b. for predicates that must combine with grammatical functions, a list of functions
So, the PRED value of (1) means that the word "disappear" means DISAPPEAR and must combine with a SUBJ and no other grammatial function(s).
Similarly for (2): the word "see" means SEE and must combine with a SUBJ, an OBJ, and no other grammatial function(s).
It follows from what was just said that not only verbs, but all words which are meaningsful have a PRED value. Here are some more examples:
a. "Lilly": [PRED 'LILLY']
b. "cat": [PRED 'CAT']
Some function words like the determiners "a" and "the" are not assumed to have the feature PRED, because they are assumed to have "grammatical" meanings which are different from the meanings of verbs and nouns.
Exercise 5.1
1. Go to https://147.210.117.56 and log in.
2. Open your version of Grammar 4."
3. Add appropriate PRED features to the lexical entries that need them.
4. Parse.
5. In the Lexicon editor, add your first name as a noun, but do not give the noun a PRED value.
6. Add a test sentence "[YOUR FIRST NAME] snores"
7. Parse.
8. Study the output for the last test sentence and try to understand it.
9. Go back to the Lexicon editor and add an appropriate PRED feature and value to the entry for your name.
10. Parse.
Thematic Roles
So far, we have completely ignored semantics. But xlfg is capable of representing the assignment of thematic roles to the arguments of predicates. The textbook contains a list of thematic roles (see the file Lexical-Functional Grammar - Thematic Roles 13 on Olat!). Using these roles, the next exercise asks you to assign an argument structure to each predicate that governs grammatical functions. The notation is extremely simple: just put a period and a role name after each GF name, as follows:
[PRED 'pred<GF.Role>']
Here are some concrete examples:
- [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT>']
- [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT, OBJ.PATIENT>']
- [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT, OBJ.PATIENT, OBL.LOCATION>']
- [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.THEME>']
Exercise 5.2
1. Go to https://147.210.117.56 and log in.
2. Open your latest version of Grammar 4 - 2025-07-16
3. Click on "Output Parameters"
4. Under "Output for Argument-Structure:" select "Draw the Argument-Structure as an acyclic graph"
5. Return to "Input"
6. Assign the thematic role THEME to the SUBJ of the verb disappeared.
7. Parse and look at the output for the sentence John disappeared.
8. Study the relationship between the f-structure and the Argument Structure in the output.
9. Now assign thematic roles to all the other governed grammatical functions in your lexicon and make sure you get the expected Argument Structure output.
Homework