Deriving Syntactic Properties of Arguments and Adjuncts from Neo-Davidsonian Semantics

This paper aims to show that certain syntactic differences between arguments and adjuncts can be thought of as a transparent reflection of differences between their contributions to neo-Davidsonian logical forms. Specifically, the crucial underlying distinction will be that between modifying an event variable directly, and modifying an event variable indirectly via a thematic relation. I note a convergence between the semantic composition of neo-Davidsonian logical forms and existing descriptions of the syntactic properties of adjunction, and then propose a novel integration of syntactic mechanisms with explicit neo-Davidsonian semantics which sheds light on the nature of the distinction between arguments and adjuncts. This paper aims to show that certain syntactic differences between arguments and adjuncts can be thought of as a transparent reflection of differences between their contributions to neo-Davidsonian logical forms. Specifically, the crucial underlying distinction will be that between modifying an event variable directly, as violently and yesterday do in (1), and modifying an event variable indirectly via a thematic relation, as b and c do in (1). (1) a. Brutus stabbed Caesar violently yesterday b. ∃e[stabbing(e) ∧ Stabber(e,b) ∧ Stabbee(e, c) ∧ violent(e) ∧ yesterday(e)] I note a convergence between the semantic composition of neo-Davidsonian logical forms and the mechanisms added by Frey and Gärtner [1] to Stabler’s Minimalist Grammar (MG) formalism [2] to allow adjunction phenomena. Frey and Gärtner provide an accurate formal encapsulation of what the distinctive syntactic properties of adjunction are. This paper contributes a novel integration of syntactic mechanisms with explicit neo-Davidsonian semantics which sheds light on why these properties cluster together. 1 Two Classes of Words Consider the sentence in (2) and the variants of it in (3–6). ⋆ Thanks to Norbert Hornstein, Greg Kobele, Paul Pietroski, Amy Weinberg and Alexander Williams for helpful discussions related to this paper. (2) Brutus stabbed Caesar (3) a. Brutus stabbed Caesar violently b. Brutus stabbed Caesar yesterday c. Brutus stabbed Caesar violently yesterday d. Brutus stabbed Caesar yesterday violently (4) a. * Brutus stabbed Caesar Cassius b. * Brutus stabbed Caesar Antony c. * Brutus stabbed Caesar Cassius Antony (5) a. Caesar stabbed Brutus b. Brutus stabbed Cassius c. Antony stabbed Caesar (6) a. * Brutus stabbed b. * stabbed Caesar c. * stabbed First, we can infer from (3) that there is some class of words, including ‘violently’ and ‘yesterday’, which can be boundlessly added to the sentence in (2) without affecting grammaticality, though no word of this class need be present. Let us call this class of words Class 1. We also note that each sentence in (3) implies the one in (2), and infer that any sentence including a word of Class 1 implies the sentence just like it but with that word removed; see Fig. 1. The data in (4) indicates that there is also some other class of words, including at least ‘Cassius’ and ‘Antony’, which can not be added to the sentence in (2) without affecting grammaticality. Let us call this class of words Class 2. Next, we can infer on the basis of (5) that ‘Brutus’ and ‘Caesar’ belong to a single class of words, since they can be interchanged without affecting grammaticality; and that this class must be Class 2, that of ‘Cassius’ and ‘Antony’. We also discover a difference between Class 1 and Class 2: while interchanging two Class 1 words does not produce any obvious difference in meaning (compare (3c) and (3d)), interchanging two Class 2 words does (compare (2) and (5a)). Finally, (6) shows that Class 2 words also can not be removed without affecting grammaticality, just as (4) shows that they can not be added. In sum we have discovered two classes of words with the following properties. (7) Distributional properties: a. Of Class 1 words, any number zero or greater can be present in a sentence constructed around ‘stabbed’. b. Of Class 2 words, exactly two must be present in a sentence constructed around ‘stabbed’. (8) Semantic properties: a. When two Class 1 words are interchanged, no obvious difference in meaning results.