Structure-Function Correspondence Question

[Peter Jenks]

Hello!

I have a theoretical question about LFG that pertains to a paper/thesis I'm
currently working on.

Louisa Sadler (Clitics and the Structure-Function Mapping, 1997) cites Joan
Bresnan's 1997 unpublished Lexical Functional Syntax as claiming that one
of the principles of structure-function correspondence for endocentric
constructions is "Specifiers of lexical categories are adjuncts." In
Bresnan's published Lexical Functional Syntax (2001) she phrases it a
little differently, stating that "Constituents adjoined to phrasal
constituents are nonargument functions AF or not annotated."

The question here is whether it would be misled to place a SPEC (in this
case, a quantifier) in the specifier of NP as opposed to component of the
DP (which really doesn't work that well for the data in question). While I
realize that configurational structure doesn't have the overarching
importance in LFG that it does in other generative theories, it would still
be nice to know whether or not this would represent a break from LFG
tradition. With respect to Sadler (1997) and Bresnan (2001), does mapping
the specifier of a lexical category to a SPEC function violate these
principles or not? While I know her focus is not syntactic configuration,
Mary Dalrymple posits a SPEC as branching from the NP in, I believe, most
of her analyses of the syntax-semantics interface of English quantification
using glue logic (e.g. (1999) Syntax and Semantics in Lexical Functional
Grammar, I think--this is all from memory).

I may be making big deal over nothing, but as I'm relatively inexperienced
with the theory, I thought I might run it by some of you who actually have
been involved in theory-building for the last few years.

Thanks a million and happy holidays,
Peter