Core concepts of LFG

This chapter provides an in-depth coverage of the main features of the LFG framework, focusing mainly on its syntactic representations: c- and f-structure. The makeup of each level is discussed in detail. For c-structure, I describe the version of X$'$ theory used in LFG and the status of lexical integrity as a core principle of the framework. I discuss the notion of f-structure as a function/set of feature-value pairs that is used in the majority of LFG work; attribute value types and well-formedness conditions on f-structure (Uniqueness, Completeness and Coherence) are covered as well. I also describe the metalanguage for defining f-structures and the mapping from c- to f-structures, and note some linguistically relevant consequences of how this mapping is organized. Three proposed extensions of the standard architecture are also discussed: templates (constructions), minimal c-structure, and lexical sharing.