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[Carl Pollard]

Hi Allison,

Are you at Rutgers this year? Or just passing through?

How do you happen to be wondering about arguments vs. adjuncts in
HPSG? The answer to your question is not exactly straightforward.  I
think the take on this question in the book is that GAVE THE LETTER TO
JOHN is formed by combining the word GAVE with the complement phrases
THE LETTER and JOHN via the head-complement schema, and subsequently
GAVE THE LETTER TO JOHN combines with the adjunct phrase ON TUESDAY
via the head-adjunct schema.  But Ivan's position for the past few
years has been that most so-called adjuncts that come after the verb
in English are actually complements (although they are not lexically
selected as ARGUMENTS by the lexical head), and therefore show up
structurally as sisters to those complements which are arguments.  If
you want to see the details of this position, ask Ivan
(sag at csli.stanford.edu) for his joint paper with Gosse Bouma and Rob
Malouf called "Satisfying Constraints on Extraction and Adjunction".
I think you can download it from his website.

Cheers,

Carl