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Complements and Adjuncts
Complements and adjuncts have very different structures in the XTAG grammar.
Complements are included in the elementary tree anchored by the verb that
selects them, while adjuncts do not originate in the same elementary tree as
the verb anchoring the sentence, but are instead added to a structure by
adjunction. The contrasts between complements and adjuncts have been
extensively discussed in the linguistics literature and the classification of a
given element as one or the other remains a matter of debate (see
[#!rizzi90!#],
[#!larson88!#], [#!jackendoff90!#], [#!larson90!#], [#!cinque90!#],
[#!obernauer84!#], [#!lasnik-saito84!#], and [#!chomsky86!#]). The guiding
rule used in developing the XTAG grammar is whether or not the sentence is
ungrammatical without the questioned structure.4.1 Consider the following
sentences:
(2)0(2
- (3)
- Srini bought a book.
(3)0(3
- (4)
- Srini bought a book at the bookstore.
(4)0(4
- (5)
- Srini arranged for a ride.
(5)0(5
- (6)
- Srini arranged.
Prepositional phrases frequently occur as adjuncts, and when they are
used as adjuncts they have a tree structure such as that shown in
Figure 4.2(a). This adjunction tree would adjoin into
the tree shown in Figure 4.1(a) to generate sentence
((4)). There are verbs, however, such as arrange, hunger and differentiate, that take prepositional phrases as
complements. Sentences ((5)) and ((6)) clearly show that the
prepositional phrase are not optional for arrange. For these
sentences, the prepositional phrase will be an initial tree (as shown
in Figure 4.2(b)) that substitutes into an elementary
tree, such as the one anchored by the verb arrange in
Figure 4.2(c).
Figure 4.2:
Trees illustrating the difference between Complements and Adjuncts
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Virtually all parts of speech, except for main verbs, function as both
complements and adjuncts in the grammar. More information is available in this
report on various parts of speech as complements: adjectives (e.g. section
6.13), nouns (e.g. section 6.2), and
prepositions (e.g. section 6.10); and as adjuncts: adjectives
(section 19.1), adverbs (section 19.5), nouns
(section 19.2), and prepositions (section 19.4).
Next: Non-S constituents
Up: Underview
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XTAG Project
1998-09-14