A unification-based lfg analysis of lexical discontinuity

This paper provides an analysis of the Mandarin possessive-object (POBJ) constructions as discontinuous idiom chunks. It argues that, although POBJ constructions are radically different from genuine possessive NPs in their semantics, there is no evidence of any syntactic distinction between them from which the semantic differences can be derived, and it proposes a lexically based LFG analysis in which the differences between the two constructions are accounted for in terms of differences in f structure.