universality of grammatical functions

[Rachel Nordlinger]

Tara and Mohanan said:

>Note 1: By "universal", we mean a construct or law that is available
>in linguistic theory, but need not necessarily appear in every
>language. Take the feature [1 distributed]. We can assume that it is a
>universal feature without claiming that every human language must
>exhibit the contrast between [+distr] and [-distr] in terms of
>phonological phenomena whose analysis crucially appeals to this
>distinction. Similarly, the assumption that the constraint against
>*[+nasal, -voice] is universal does not entail the claim that every
>language exhibits this constraint. If we accept this conception of
>"universal", the hypothesis that SUBJ is a universal does not entail
>the claim that every language exhibits linguistic phenomena whose
>analysis crucially calls for the construct of SUBJ.

I agree with this definition of universal.  However, it seems to me
that LFG accords a more primary position to grammatical functions than
it does to other universal features of this type.  For example, in the
theory of c-structure lfg is much freer: while VP is a universally
available category, if a language has no evidence for its existence
it simply is not present in that language.  This is different from the
approach to grammatical functions, which must be present in some form
in all languages.  So, my original question to Joan was prompted by my
own thoughts as to whether this prominence of grammatical functions in
lfg was a strength or, as some people here seem to believe, a weakness.

Rachel