The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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yes/no questions).This is completely atypical of the lexical categories, and can
therefore serve as a valid criterion for classifying an element as lexical or functional.
(iii) Meaning and function
Members of the lexical categories are assumed to have specific clear meanings
and fixed functions, as opposed to members of the functional ones which are claimed
to be often ambiguous or meaningless and perform different functions (e.g. English:
that (i) declarative complementizer (He said that she is sick), (ii) relativizer (the game
that Bart likes…), (iii) determiner (That girl is tall)). Note, however, that this
assumption regarding the members of the functional categories is imprecise, as it
applies only to some functional elements, not to all of them. Thus English modals
(e.g. can, may) are unarguably functional elements, as they differ from verbs (cf.
Chomsky 1965, Radford 1988), yet they have rather specific meanings and fixed
functions. The Hebrew relative complementizer ašer (‘that’), which is no doubt
functional (i.e. C), has a unique and specific function.
It appears that the availability of a specific meaning and function does not define
elements belonging to the lexical categories only. Put differently, association with a
specific meaning and/or a fixed function does not preclude an element from belonging
to a functional category (Grimshaw 1991, Zwarts 1995). Consequently, the meaning
and function criterion does not seem to be a reliable one for the lexical/functional
classification.
(iv) Syntactic properties
The relations between a lexical head and its complement seem to differ from the
relations between a functional head and its complement in several respects.
(a) Variety of complements: As opposed to a variety of complements, CP, DP,
PP, taken by the lexical heads (N, V, A), the familiar functional heads C, T and D
have been argued to subcategorize for a specific complement (e.g. C-TP; T-VP; D-
NP). 2, 3
However, as already mentioned in chapter 1, it has been shown in various
studies that this assumption is inaccurate. Thus Siloni (1997) argues that the
2 As mentioned in chapter 1, I do not adopt the little v hypothesis.
3 The most notable attempts to integrate this assumption into syntactic theory are Grimshaw 1991 and
Van Riemsdijk 1990, 1998 (see chapter 1).