Connecting the Argument/Adjunct Distinction Neo-Davidsonian Semantics and Move as Re-merge

Abstract. When projections of a head are targeted for syntactic operations, arguments of that head are necessarily included in the targeted constituent, while adjuncts need not be. This paper aims to make this distinction emerge naturally as a consequence,of a number,of independently motivated ideas. Section 2 shows how this distinction has been captured by stipulation in the past. Section 3 adopts a particular conception of neo-Davidsonian semantics (Pietroski 2005, 2006) that assigns syntactic relations a certain semantic significance, as suggested by UTAH (Baker 1988, 1997). This division of labor places constraints on the points of a derivation at which interpretation can occur, in a way that leaves open a degree of freedom for adjuncts that arguments lack. I formalize these syntactic consequences,by integrating the semantic assumptions,into a framework,(Stabler 2006) that embodies,the independently-appealing intuition that “movement” is best thought of as “re-merging” (section 4). Section 5 deploys these assumptions,in deriving the above-mentioned empirical distinction between,arguments and adjuncts. An appendix discusses the independent motivation for the semantic assumptions in section 3. Keywords. arguments, adjuncts, event semantics, re-merge