Adjuncts vs. arguments
Arguments are elements of a clause which have a close semantic relationship to their predicate. They are the participants which must be involved because of the very nature of the relation or activity named by the predicate, and without which the clause cannot express a “complete thought.” For example, any event named by the predicate ‘eat’ must involve at least two participants, the eater and the eaten. (This is true even though one or the other of these participants may not be mentioned in a particular description of the event, e.g. John is still eating, or The fish was eaten.) For this reason, we say that the predicate ‘eat’ takes two arguments. But speakers often need to convey other elements of meaning as well, elements which are not closely related to the meaning of the predicate but which are important to help the hearer understand the flow of the story, the time or place of an event, the way in which an action was done, etc. Elements of this type are not arguments; they are called ADJUNCTS.
Time and manner phrases are not, in most cases, related to the inherent meaning of the verb. They can be optionally added to almost any clause, as illustrated in (15):
(15) George fell down the stairs last night.
My daughter swallowed a penny last night.
John gave Mary a bouquet of roses last night.
George intentionally fell down the stairs.
My daughter intentionally swallowed a penny.
John intentionally gave Mary a bouquet of wilted roses.
It is not always easy to distinguish adjuncts from oblique arguments. One hint is that adjuncts are never obligatory, since they are not implied by (or directly related to) the meaning of the verb. To put it another way, adjuncts are always deletable (optional), whereas this may not be true of arguments. Example (16a) shows that the object of use is obligatory and therefore an argument. Similarly, (16b) shows that the verb put takes an obligatory PP argument. But adjuncts can always be omitted without creating any sense of incompleteness, as seen in (17).
(16) Arguments
a Mary used my shirt for a hand towel.
*Mary used for a hand towel.
b Henry put the money into his pocket.
*Henry put the money.
(17) Adjuncts
a George fell down the stairs last night.
George fell down the stairs.
b My daughter intentionally swallowed a penny.
My daughter swallowed a penny.
It is important to remember that arguments can also be optional. For example, many transitive verbs allow an optional beneficiary argument (18a), and most transitive verbs of the agent patient type allow an optional instrument argument (18b). The crucial fact is that adjuncts are always optional. So, the inference “if obligatory then argument” is valid; but the inference “if optional then adjunct” is not.
(18) a John baked a cake (for Mary).
b Bill cut the fish (with a pocket knife).
Second, adjuncts may be freely added to most clauses, whereas a particular kind of argument is permitted only with a verb of the appropriate type. As we will see, verbs can be “subclassified” according to the number and type of arguments they take. But adjuncts cannot be used to classify verbs, because adjuncts are semantically independent of the verb.
A third clue is that only arguments are normally eligible to bear the TERM relations (subject or object). The examples in (19) show that all three of the arguments in (19a) (agent, instrument, and patient) can be expressed as subject. The fact that the instrument can be expressed as a subject in (19b) shows that the instrument is an (optional) argument of the clause. Similarly, the fact that a beneficiary can be expressed as a direct object as in (20b) shows that the beneficiary is an (optional) argument of that clause. Adjuncts, in contrast, cannot normally be expressed as subjects or objects.
(19) a John cuts his meat with a knife.
b This knife cuts the meat easily.
c This meat cuts easily.
(20) a John baked a cake (for Mary).
b John baked Mary a cake.
Finally, arguments must be unique within their clause; that is, each verb may have at most one of any particular type of argument. For example, the second sentence in (21a) is ungrammatical because it contains two recipient arguments. Adjuncts, on the other hand, may be freely multiplied, as shown in (21b, c). Sentence (21b) contains three time phrases, and sentence (21c) contains three manner phrases, yet these sentences are perfectly natural. This fact shows that time and manner phrases are adjuncts, rather than arguments.
(21) a ARGUMENTS
John gave a bouquet of roses [to his mother].
*John gave a bouquet of roses [to his mother] [to Susan].
B TIME ADJUNCTS
George fell down the stairs [last night] [at 3:00 AM] [during the typhoon].
c MANNER ADJUNCTS
My daughter [suddenly], [impulsively], [without thinking], swallowed a penny.
We have listed four tests, or criteria, for distinguishing between adjuncts and arguments. These tests are summarized in (22). Often these criteria will provide a clear answer one way or another, but sometimes the evidence may be less than clear. This is not uncommon in linguistics. Linguists rely on tests of this kind for many different purposes. Even though such tests may not give an unambiguous answer in every case, they are extremely useful and, in fact, indispensable.
(22) ARGUMENT ADJUNCT
Obligatory maybe never
“Subclassify” verb yes no
Subj/Obj maybe never
Unique within clause yes no
Arnold Zwicky (1985) points out that such tests should not be regarded as definitions, but as symptoms. We do not define adjuncts or arguments in terms of the properties listed in (22); but knowing which properties are characteristic of each class will help us to recognize them when we find them. Zwicky’s point suggests a helpful analogy between linguists and medical doctors. The human body is a very complex system. Each part can affect the others in various ways, and a single symptom (e.g. a fever) can have several different underlying causes. Similarly, the grammar of a language is a very complex system. Just as the doctor looks for the diagnosis which will best account for the various symptoms, so the linguist tries to find the best “diagnosis” of the data, i.e. the hypothesis about the underlying patterns of the grammar that best accounts for the observable facts.
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