A Theory of Predicates Lexicalism is a theory of information
associated with words and what exactly a word is. The authors
propose a different idea of what can be contained in words.
Lexicalism is first and foremost a hypothesis about functional-
semantic information and secondarily a hypothesis about the
formal expression of this information. Grammar rules cannot
change the argument structure of words. Any change to the
meaning of words must occur in the lexicon. A new lexical theory
of complex predicates is proposed in this volume. The authors
argue that previous lexicalist accounts within Lexical
Functional Grammar and Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar have
abandoned certain crucial aspects of lexicalism in their efforts
to account for analytically expressed predicates, in particular
permitting predicate formation operations to occur within phrase
structure. Although the theory is presented in detail primarily
for German expressions of these predicates, consideration is
given to cross-linguistic applicat