Argument/Adjunct Dichotomy:

Program

• Chair: Andreas Kathol
• 9:00--9:10 Introduction
  Tracy Holloway King and Adam Przepiórkowski
• 9:10--9:40 Construction Grammar
  Paul Kay
• 9:40--10:10 Lexical-Functional Grammar
  Jane Simpson
• 10:10--10:30 Break
• 10:30--11:00 Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
  Ivan Sag
• 11:00--11:30 Commentary
  Peter Sells
• 11:30--12:00 Discussion
  moderated by Andreas Kathol

Background

The main aim of this workshop is to promote discussion between the Construction Grammar (CG), Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) communities concerning the proper representation of adjuncts and the argument/adjunct distinction (if any) within constraint-based theories.

Linguistic theories make drastically different assumptions regarding which grammatical levels are responsible for the argument/adjunct dichotomy. Transformational theories have long assumed that there is a clear configurational distinction between arguments and adjuncts (although this distinction becomes murky in Minimalism). In contrast, LFG has assumed that arguments and adjuncts should not be distinguished tree-configurationally, i.e., within c-structure, but at the level of grammatical functions, i.e., within f-structure (Bresnan 1982). Within HPSG, both approaches have been assumed, sometimes simultaneously: Pollard and Sag 1987 assume that adjuncts are sisters to heads and Pollard and Sag 1994 revert to the tree-configurational distinction. Recent HPSG work re-examines phenomena claimed to require a configurational distinction (extraction, case assignment), re-introducing the idea that at least some adjuncts are tree-configurationally indistinguishable from complements; however, the current realization of this idea in HPSG is different than in LFG or in early HPSG in that (some) adjuncts are assumed to be lexically added to the argument structures of heads. Finally, within CG, adjuncts are treated in a similar way to recent HPSG analyses, in that they are added to the head's list of arguments, but, unlike in HPSG, this is done constructionally, at the phrase level.

This brief summary shows that, although LFG, HPSG and CG converge in rejecting a clear-cut distinction between arguments and adjuncts based on their respective tree-configurational positions, there are still interesting differences between treatments of the argument/adjunct dichotomy within these three frameworks which warrants careful comparison. We hope that this workshop will add to our understanding of such issues as:

• what is the extent to which the argument/adjunct distinction should be represented tree-configurationally (if at all);
• what is the grammatical level at which the argument/adjunct distinction should be represented (if at all);
• what are the arguments for lexical vs. constructional approaches to the argument/adjunct distinction.

Contact Information

ORGANIZERS:

Tracy Holloway King (Xerox PARC): thking@parc.xerox.com
Adam Przepiórkowski (Ohio State University): adamp@ling.ohio-state.edu

PARTICIPANTS:

Andreas Kathol (UC Berkeley): kathol@socrates.berkeley.edu
Paul Kay (UC Berkeley): kay@cogsci.berkeley.edu
Ivan Sag (Stanford University): sag@csli.stanford.edu
Peter Sells (Stanford University): sells@csli.stanford.edu
Jane Simpson (Sydney University): jhs@mail.usyd.edu.au