Argument Structure

Abstract

The term “argument structure” is used to refer to the lexical representation of argument-taking lexical items—typically verbs, but also nouns (especially nominalizations), adjectives, and even prepositions—that specifies sufficient information about these items’ arguments to allow their syntactic realization to be determined. An argument structure typically indicates the number of arguments a lexical item takes (e.g., the core participants in the eventuality a verb denotes), their syntactic expression, and their semantic relation to this lexical item. The notion of argument structure, which was first adopted by researchers working in the government-binding framework around 1980, is a descendant of the subcategorization frame of 1960s transformational grammar, which acknowledges that a lexical item’s argument-taking properties may be driven in part by its meaning. Although its purpose might seem straightforward, there is no single conception of argument structure. The understanding of the notion as a theoretical construct varies with a researcher’s theoretical predispositions, especially with respect to how semantics and syntax interface with each other. Such variation in usage is reflected in controversies over the nature of argument structure. Furthermore, certain approaches, particularly lexicalist approaches, assume morphosyntactic processes that affect a predicate’s argument-taking potential operate over argument structure, while other approaches take such processes to operate on syntactic configurations, and still others propose that both the syntax and the lexicon can be domains for such processes. Finally, certain researchers now suggest that the empirical domain subsumed under the label “argument structure” derives from other facets of the syntactic context that lexical items are found in, and some of them even question whether lexical items have an argument structure. Despite these controversies, “argument structure” is now adopted as a pretheoretical cover term to refer to those linguistic phenomena that involve the realization of a lexical item’s arguments, including morphosyntactic phenomena that affect the morphosyntactic realization of arguments. This use has become widespread and is not limited to researchers sharing the theoretical orientation of those who first introduced the term. This article emphasizes research on the notion of argument structure as a theoretical construct referring to a lexical representation that captures a lexical item’s argument-taking potential; thus, much of the work cited here is from the 1980s and early 1990s. The article also includes discussion of some major morphosyntactic phenomena discussed under the label “argument structure.”