LFG and Australian languages

Australian languages exhibit many interesting grammatical properties and have featured in LFG-related research since the earliest days of the framework. In this chapter I survey the features of Australian languages that have featured most prominently in work within LFG, and show how they argue strongly for the parallel architecture of LFG and in particular the separation of functional relations at f-structure from phrasal constituency and linearity at c-structure. These morphosyntactic features include non-configurationality and flexible word order, the role of morphology in encoding grammatical relations, case stacking, valence-changing phenomena and complex predicates. I show how the flexibility afforded by LFG's parallel architecture, which separates c-structure from f-structure with a many-to-many mapping between them, allows for a natural and explanatory account of these properties of Australian languages. In return, the empirical questions prompted by these theoretical analyses and their predictions have led to a more detailed understanding of the intricate grammatical structures of various Australian languages, and explain the appeal of the LFG formalism for fieldworkers engaged in Australian language documentation.