Robert Levine (levine@ling.ohio-state.edu)
Mon, 20 Jan 97 17:28:05 EST
There are two points about Gosse's comments that I think should be made: (1) You cannot avoid putting adjuncts on the ARG-ST list if you're going to extract them using Ivan's traceless theory of connectivity, because only by putting them on the ARG-ST list will you be able to define a single morphosyntactic condition triggering binding domain effects for languages which display such effect, in the general case. Verbs which subcategorize for complements containing a gap will have both COMPS lists and ARG-ST lists which contain elements bearing a SLASH specification. But the V from whose COMPS list the filler is missing (via the CELR) will have a SLASHed element only on its ARG-ST list, obviously; inspection of the COMPS list will contain no information which could trigger the appearance of binding domain effects---that's built into the whole approach. So the only common property of the two cases that allows one to define a unitary property of heads' lexical entries which triggers binding domain morphosyntax is that the ARG-ST list contains a SLASHed synsem object. In that case, adjuncts have to go on ARG-ST lists and the cataphora facts can't be evaded, unless you change the binding theory fairly dramatically. (2) If you're going to say that anything which can be extracted is automatically a complement, then all `complement' means anymore is that something is extractable. In that case, presumably, it's purely accidental that the French strictly negative adverbs seem to clearly induce multiple lexical entries as discussed by Abeille and Godard while garden variety non-negative adverbs do not. Any approach which makes it impossible to extract something *unless* it's selected by the verb will of course force you to say that everything which extracts is selected. Then empirical embarrassments like the various ways binding properties of adjuncts and complements differ have to be consequences of whatever residual differences remain. It seemed to me that it was precisely because there were sharp differences in behavior between the negative and non-negative adverbs that the French group elected to preserve the distinction. To invert the argumentation once again, the success of the binding theory in effectively predicting the cataphora and antireconstruction facts for unselected element might well be taken as a sign that such elements *are* in fact unselected. Following this line of reasoning, one *wouldn't* wish to adopt a theory of connectivity which redefined unselected elements as selected simply so one could get rid of traces. Bob
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