<i>One</i>-replacement and the label-less theory of adjuncts

Abstract

One-replacement and the label-less theory of adjuncts Yosuke Sato 1. Introduction The proper treatment of adjuncts has been a central issue in syntactic theory since the 1980s. In the X′-theoretic analysis in the Government and Binding (gb) Theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986), they were commonly treated as optional elements attached to an intermediate or maximal projection of the head they modify. However, this treatment has been shown to be no longer tenable in the more recent Bare Phrase Structure (bps) Theory for several conceptual reasons (Chomsky 1995: ch. 4), which renders the status of adjuncts all the more puzzling. Recently, however, Hornstein and Nunes (2008) (henceforth H&N) have proposed a new theory of adjuncts that conforms to the precepts of the bps. It proposes that adjuncts need not be labeled for purposes of syntactic computation in contrast to complements and specifiers, which require the result of concatenation to be labeled. This squib presents new evidence for H&N’s theory from one-replacement. It has been commonly held that replacement is subject to the constituency requirement. However, Radford (1988) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) observe that the anaphoric one may pick up a discontinuous constituent as its antecedent, contrary to the conventional view. I show that this interpretation, though puzzling under the X′-theoretic analysis of onereplacement, naturally falls into place under H&N’s theory of adjuncts. 2. Hornstein and Nunes’s (2008) Label-Less Theory of Adjuncts H&N propose that both complements and specifiers require the result of concatenation to be labeled for the purposes of semantic interpretation at the Conceptual– Intentional System while adjuncts may only require concatenation. This theory may sound at odds with the view in the gb era that special modes of licensing (e.g., Chomsky-adjunction, special labeling algorithms) are in order for the proper integration of adjuncts into a phrase structure, unlike complements and specifiers. H&N argue, however, that their alternative view is preferred over the gb view under the Neo-Davidsonian semantic framework (Parsons 1990, Schein 1993).Within this framework, it is complement/specifier elements that need grammatical pivots (such as subject-of and object-of ) to properly serve as participants of an event denoted by the predicate; adjuncts, on the other hand, can directly modify the event without such aid. This contrast can be seen in the Neo-Davidsonian semantic representation for the sentence in (1a), shown in (1b). [End Page 416] 1. a. John ate the cake in the yard. b. ∃e [eating (e) & subject (John, e) & object (the cake, e) & in-the-yard (e)] (H&N:70) H&N claim that this difference between complements/specifiers and adjuncts at the semantic interface motivates their different modes of integration into a phrase structure. Specifically, adopting the idea from Hornstein (2009) that the so-called Merge operation (Chomsky 1995) is decomposed into concatenation and labeling, they propose that the composition of a complement/specifier requires both concatenation and labeling whereas that of an adjunct may only require concatenation. This difference is shown in (2). 2. a. [X X∧Y] b. [X X∧Y] ∧ Z c. [X [X X∧Y] ∧ Z] ] (exx. 2a, 2b from H&N: 65–66) In (2a), X is concatenated with Y. The result of this concatenation is then labeled as X to yield a complex atomic unit accessible for further concatenations. In (2b), Z is concatenated with the atomic unit in (2a), but the concatenate is not followed by labeling and hence cannot be accessed for further concatenations. This derivation, thus, gives substance to one recent view, expressed in one way or another, that adjuncts “dangle off” the syntactic workspace (Uriagereka 1998, Chomsky 2004). Example (2c), on the other hand, illustrates the case where the concatenation of Z with [X X∧Y] is followed by labeling.1 H&N show that this label-less theory of adjuncts brings favorable empirical payoffs in several areas, including the invisibility of adjuncts to focus projection (Gussenhoven 1984), the non-inhibitory effect of adjuncts to affix-hopping (Chomsky 1957, Bobaljik 1995), the ellipsis resolution in the antecedent-contained deletion (May 1985), and the “discontinuous” interpretation of the anaphoric do so-proform. I briefly illustrate...