Mermaid Constructions in Lexical Functional Grammar

Abstract

This paper provides a cross-linguistic analysis of Mermaid Constructions in terms of Lexical Functional Grammar. Mermaid  Constructions, coined by Tsunoda (2020), are grammaticalized monoclausal constructions in which a verb and a noun, sometimes with a copula, form a compound predicate. However, the work was chiefly descriptive, and the morphosyntactic nature of Mermaid Constructions in theoretical terms has not yet been explained. In this work, in opposition to Tsunoda’s (2020) hypothesis, the following points are shown: (1) Mermaid Constructions are not monoclausal but biclausal; (2) Mermaid Constructions do not comprise a compound predicate, but are control and raising with a nominal predicate; (3) these findings hold cross-linguistically.