Chapter 18 Lexical Functions: Description of Lexical Relations in a ...

—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 69
• proliferation of common elements in the values of f for different keywords, which leads to
the necessity of generalizing them.
Let us take these two problems in turn.
5.1. Elements of the Value f(L) as Subentries within L’s Entry
Logically speaking, an element L´ in the value of the LF f(L) can itself be an LU of lan-
guage L and have a lexical entry of its own, where its properties are fully specified. Yet it is also
quite possible, and it actually happens more often than not, that as (an element of) the value of a
particular LF f(L1), this L´ possesses some properties concerning, e.g., its Government Pattern [=
GP] or even its inflection, which it does not possess as an element of the value of f(L2) or g(L1)
or else as a ‘free’ LU. The observable peculiarities of L´ are phraseological; they do not, strictly
speaking, accrue to L´ as such, but are due to its being part of the collocation L´ + L. These pecu-
liarities must be indicated in the lexical entry of L—where L´ itself is specified. This means that
an element L´ of the value f(L) of the LF f given in the entry of f’s keyword L can form an
embedded subentry which carries whatever is individual and idiosyncratic information for the
particular collocation; these data override the indications found in L´’s own entry (where we have
to look for the information which is not peculiar to the collocation in question—the phonological
form, morphological data, etc.).
The information specified in the subentry of an element of an LF f(L) value concerns those
of its syntactic properties that are specific to the given collocation; let me briefly review them. An
LF-value element subentry, i.e., the data accompanying the element L´ ∈ f(L), may contain the
following types of linguistic information:
1) A reduced GP of L´. This reduced GP specifies the form of SSynt-Actants of L´: governed
prepositions and conjunctions, grammatical cases, and the like, their obligatoriness, their cooccur-
rence with each other, etc. Moreover, the reduced GP may be affected by the following complica-
tion: As a general rule, the reduced GP for a given element L´ of the value f(L) specifies the
government of L´ only; L retains its own GP, which, therefore, does not need to be repeated in the
subentry of L´. But in some cases, the GP of L changes in the phrase L´ + L as well, and this fact
has to be shown somehow in the reduced GP of L´. The change in question can be twofold:
• Either some of the expressions of the DSyntAs of L are lost; this is indicated by a special
condition of the type “CII(L) = Λ” [‘DSyntA II of L cannot be expressed’], which accompanies
the subentry of L´.