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

Tim Hunter

Abstract: 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.