Referent Systems and Relational Grammar

Abstract. Relational Grammar (RG) was introduced in the 70's as a theory of grammatical relations and relation change, for example, passivization, dative shift, and raising. Furthermore, the idea behind RG was that transformations as originally designed in generative grammar were unable to capture the common kernel of, e. g., passivization across languages. The research conducted within RG has uncovered a wealth of phenomena for which it could produce a satisfactory analysis. Although the theory of Government and Binding has answered some of the complaints, still it left many phenomena unaccounted for. Referent Systems (RSs) have been introduced by Kees Vermeulen in (Vermeulen, 1995) to overcome certain weaknesses of Dynamic Semantics. Their usefulness has not yet been realized in semantical theory. We shall show here that their significance cannot be overestimated. Namely, we will show in this paper that there exists a fundamental affinity to RG. Both handle the relation between ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: JOLLI
• Authors: Marcus Kracht
• Keywords: JOLLI 2002, Relation Change, Relational Grammar, Theory