The obligatoriness of arguments

A common diagnostic for distinguishing between arguments and adjuncts is obligatoriness/optionality: as a rule of thumb, arguments are obligatory and adjuncts are optional. However, there are many examples of optional arguments, which have led researchers to question the usefulness of this diagnostic and sometimes even the very distinction between arguments and adjuncts. This paper aims to show that arguments are not simply optional; they are omissible only under identifiable grammatical and pragmatic conditions. By contrast, there are no conditions on when adjuncts can be omitted. There are instead pragmatic conditions that dictate the inclusion of adjuncts.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Language and Linguistics Compass

• Publication date

  2024-03-19

• Fields of study

  Linguistics, Computer Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/lnc3.12511
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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