Understanding Verb Structure in Sentence Formation: An English Grammar Assignment Essay

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Sofía Fernández Becerra
Grammar 1: Task 1
English Studies, Group: 220
24/04/14
Examine examples (1) to (3) below:
1. (1) a. The postman handed Pat the letter.
b. The postman handed the letter to Pat. c. The postman handed the letter. d. *The postman handed to Pat.
2. (2) a. I never argue with Pat about politics. b. I never argue with Pat.
c. I never argue about politics.
d. I never argue.
3. (3) a. Small businesses locate in rural areas.
b. *Small businesses locate.
(i) Discuss the contrasts in grammaticality and ungrammaticality illustrated in each example by focusing on the notion of optional constituent. Make sure you discuss optionality with reference to the distinction complement/adjunct.
(ii) Provide further evidence (tests!) to support your answer as well as the lexical entries of the verbs involved.

Task 2: COMPLEMENTS VS. ADJUNCTS

The aim of this essay is to analyse the sentences in (1), (2) and (3) in order to study the internal structure of their VPs and consider whether there are differences between them. “The argument structure of a predicate predicts the number of constituents that are obligatory and their semantic type” (Verb argument structure. 2009). The study will be focused on the analysis of the phrasal constituents of each VP in order to determine their status as complements or adjuncts. An adjunct is a constituent that represents a semantically optional participant, one that is not required by the predicate as a necessary participant in the event it denotes. Adjuncts are both semantically and syntactically optional. Moreover a complement is the internal argument(s) necessarily involved in the event denoted by a predicate. It is usually both syntactically and semantically obligatory, but it can be omitted, that is to say, it can be syntactically optional: optional complements.

In order to determine the transitivity of the verbs, the complement-adjunct tests are needed. With them, we will be able to find out the category of the constituents of the sentences and establish the status of “Pat” and “the letter” in (1), “with Pat” and “about politics” in (2) and “in rural areas” in (3) as complements or adjuncts.

Now, we are going to analyse the category of the constituents in the examples of (1):
(1)
a. The postman handed Pat the letter.
b. The postman handed the letter to Pat.
c. The postman handed the letter.
d. *The postman handed to Pat.
The complement-adjunct tests that are present in (1) are ordering restrictions in examples (1a) and 1b) and obligatoriness vs. optionality in examples (1c) and (1d):
The ordering restrictions test shows us that the complement will precede the adjunct if the complement phrase and the adjunct phrase co-occur within the same VP, since it is licensed by V.
(1)
a. The postman handed Pat the letter.
b. The postman handed the letter to Pat.
In example (1a) the constituent “Pat” is placed preceding “the letter” and the sentence is grammatical so we can asume “Pat” is a complement. In (1b) the sequence “the letter” has been changed the position in order to precede the constituent “Pat” to see if the sentence is grammatically possible. As

we see, the sentence is grammatical, therefore, “the letter” is also a complement.

The obligatoriness vs. optionality test is used in examples (1c) and (1d). This test shows us, as we have explained before, that adjuncts are both semantically and syntactically optional, whereas complements are usually both syntactically and semantically obligatory. Thus we have pointed out that they can be omitted, that is to say, they can be syntactically optional, and this is what we call optional complements.
(1)
c. The postman handed the letter.
d. *The postman handed to Pat.
As we have demonstrated in examples (1a) and (1b), the constituents “Pat” and “the letter” are both complements. Therefore, we can argue that the constituent “Pat” is an optional complement because in example (1c) that constituent is omitted but the
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