The presentation builds on a new design of LFG's projection architecture developed in (Butt, Dalrymple, Frank 1997), which aims at a seamless integration of Linking Theory (or Lexical Mapping Theory) into LFG's system of multiple levels of linguistic representation. Part and parcel of this architectural design is (i) an approach to underspecified grammatical function assignment via disjunction, and (ii) a preference system for "ranking'' the set of alternative linkings that are generated in this way, in order to determine a set of "optimal linkings''. The ranking system proposed in (Butt et al. 1997) is still tentative in being inspired by, but not truly in the spirit of Optimality Theory, and admittedly fails to predict the right results for certain types of linkings.
The objective is now to come up with a more refined set of basic constraints on linking, to be grounded in linguistically established concepts. The attempt is also to develop a system of ranking that is more in line with Optimality Theory: we assume a GEN module that assigns grammatical functions to argument structure positions, while the ranking system will define a set of ranked constraints on linking, which in interaction will yield a filter (EVAL) on the various linking possibilities, generated by the underspecified assignments of grammatical functions.
The resulting system of "optimal linking" offers a set of linguistically wellfounded constraints, and makes certain assumptions about language-specific rankings of these constraints. We propose a treatment of the passive alternation in an OT-based system for linking, and show that the ranking system covers a wide range of linking phenomena that were discussed in the literature, as e.g. locative inversion, applicative constructions in (a)symmetric object languages, dative shift, and relation changes in complex causative constructions. In particular, we propose a linking constraint that provides a uniform treatment of the three latter phenomena across a variety of typologically distinct languages.
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