37.1922, Reviews: Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context: Rui P. Chaves; Paul Kay; Laura A. Michaelis (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1922. Fri May 29 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1922, Reviews: Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context: Rui P. Chaves; Paul Kay; Laura A. Michaelis (2025)

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Date: 29-May-2026
From: Doaa Riziq [d_riziq at asu.edu.jo]
Subject: Rui P. Chaves; Paul Kay; Laura A. Michaelis (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-2828

Title: Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context
Series Title: Elements in Construction Grammar
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/grammar-and-syntax/unrealized-arguments-and-grammar-context?format=PB&isbn=9781009663830

Author(s): Rui P. Chaves; Paul Kay; Laura A. Michaelis

Reviewer: Doaa Riziq

SUMMARY
The volume “Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context” is edited
by Chaves, Kay and Michaelis. It is intended for advanced scholars who
are interested in conducting research on argument omission. It offers
a detailed analysis of Null Instantiation (NI). This linguistic
phenomenon provides evidence that a sentence may leave out an argument
whether it is in the subject position as in ‘∅ contains alcohol’,
object position as in ‘We won ∅’ or oblique object position as in
‘Nixon resigned ∅’. As a phenomenon placed at the interface between
semantics, syntax and pragmatics, NI raises critical questions about
how argument structures are licensed and interpreted in different
contexts across languages including English, and how nearly synonymous
verbs can exhibit different NI behaviors (Fillmore, 1986; Lambrecht &
Lemoine, 2005, and Ruppenhofer & Michaelis, 2010). For example, the
verb ‘finish’ may occur without an overt object while its semantically
related counterpart ‘complete’ cannot stand in a sentence without
having an overt object. In other words, these nearly synonymous verb
pairs differentially allow omission of the theme argument, as seen in
the following example: ‘When you finish/*complete ∅, come show it to
me’.
The volume places the analysis of NI within an established theoretical
tradition on argument structure and construction grammar.
Particularly, it draws on influential studies conducted by Fillmore
(1969, 1986, 1988, 2013), Rappaport-Hovav and Levin (1998), Goldberg
(2006), and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005), among others. The
discussion provides competing explanations of NI and examines the role
of verbs’ semantic properties in determining their potential for
argument omission. Rappaport-Hovav and Levin (1998) attempt to predict
NI potential from a verb’s Aktionsart class (state, activity,
achievement, accomplishment). In support of this proposal, Pinker
(2013) argues, in his theory of argument structure, that verbs’
semantic properties determine the number and kind of arguments encoded
grammatically in a sentence and further confirms that the structure of
a sentence is guided by its meaning. Pinker’s theory of argument
structure proved to be useful in the analysis of data from different
languages including Arabic (Riziq & Hamdan, 2022). However, other
approaches emphasize the role of discourse factors, which treat NI
widely as a pragmatic effect (Goldberg, 2006), suggesting that
unrealized arguments express “semantic roles” whose type or identity
is either (a) irrelevant to the message conveyed by the predication or
(b) recoverable from context. In addition, constructional patterns
play an essential role in licensing argument omission. In this case,
implicit arguments are more syntactically active and derive part of
their semantic value from elsewhere in the linguistic representation.
Such implicit arguments resemble NI but differ from it in that their
interpretation is governed by some aspects of grammar, rather than by
discourse context.
The volume presents an essential contribution, which highlights the
distinction between two types of licensing. The first is lexical
licensing, which indicates that verbs’ semantic properties inherently
allow for missing arguments such as the verb ‘eat’ or ‘finish’, which
may occur without an overt object. The second is constructional
licensing, which focuses on a grammatical pattern or the structure of
the sentence, which allows an argument to be missing. For example, the
reference of the implicit subject in ‘Don’t ∅ be so hard …’, is
constructionally controlled (i.e., a second-person nominal who is the
addressee). The volume also focuses on how omitted arguments are
interpreted in discourse by distinguishing between anaphoric and
existential interpretation, which predicts the missing argument based
on an earlier context or shared background knowledge. Hence, the
omitted argument is understood to exist but does not refer to any
specific discourse referent. For example, the object is omitted in ‘We
won ∅’ while the subject is omitted in ‘∅ Contains alcohol’.
Nevertheless, they need to be contextually encoded.
The contributors rely on several sources to demonstrate the difference
between the two types of NI, namely, Definite Null Instantiation (DNI)
and Indefinite Null Instantiation (INI) (Fillmore, 1969, 1986; Shopen,
1973). The DNI indicates that the implicit argument is recoverable
from the context as in ‘I contributed 25$ ∅’, where the implicit PP
element is contextually encoded (e.g., to it). Here, I can take for
granted that the addressee can identify the entity to which I made the
contribution. On the contrary, the INI is viewed as a kind of
lexically constrained convention of existential import. The missing
argument in ‘I contributed ∅ to the Red Cross’ is non-specific or
generic. It means that I contributed something, usually a sum of money
or goods of some kind, to the Red Cross with no need to mention the
stuff of any contribution.
The volume contains three sections: each centered on a major dimension
of NI. They move from empirical observation to theoretical
formalization in a clear and organized manner. The first section is an
introduction to NI. It presents some key corpus studies on argument
predictability to further enhance the readers understanding of NI
using a larger sample of verbs based on the semantic role or construal
of the omitted argument. The second section presents an empirical
overview of the types of implicit argument phenomena and gives
examples on lexical semantic idiosyncrasy of NI and suggests examples
on lexically, contextually and constructionally licensed NI. The third
section develops a formally explicit theory of English within the
framework of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) (Michaelis 2012;
Sag 2012, a version of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar that draws
from earlier work in Berkeley Construction Grammar (Fillmore, 1988,
2013; Kay, 2002; Kay & Fillmore, 1999).
EVALUATION
The contributors offer a well-structured explanation of NI. It focuses
on how grammar and context interact to interpret missing arguments.
This linguistic phenomenon is supported by well-chosen examples across
all sections. These examples enhance understanding of NI and allow
readers to observe the theoretical development with clarity. Certain
key studies are involved to strengthen the analytical foundation and
add a significant contribution to literature on argument structure.
However, the volume seems more like an extended research paper than a
pedagogically oriented study because of its brevity and compressed
argumentation. It seems to presuppose a high degree of familiarity on
the part of the reader. Some technical terms and theoretical
assumptions are presented with limited explanation, such as the
Aktionsart class of verbs, NI types and SBCG. In fact, specialists in
the field may not find this problematic, yet non-native speakers of
English or readers from neighboring disciplines may encounter
difficulties in understanding these terms.
SBCG seems difficult for readers who are not familiar with formal
linguistics. Unlike the traditional simple notation, SBCG uses
technical tools like feature structures and formulates rules in a
constraint-based formalism. Despite its complexity, SBCG remains
useful because it helps explain the way patterns in language connect
structure with meaning.
Overall, the volume adds a significant contribution to the study of
argument omission and its grammatical licensing. It encourages
contrastive research on languages beyond English to enhance a
cross-linguistic understanding of NI.
REFERENCES
Fillmore, C. J. (1969). Types of lexical information. In Studies in
syntax and semantics (Vol 12, pp. 109-137). Dordrecht: Springer
Netherlands.‏
Fillmore, C. J. (1986). Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora. In
Annual meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society (pp. 95-107).‏
Fillmore, C. J. (1988). The mechanisms of "construction grammar". In
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (Vol. 14, pp.
35-55).‏
Fillmore, C. J. (2013). Berkeley construction grammar.‏ In T. Hoffman
& G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp.
111–132). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, A. E. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of
generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kay, P. (2002). English subjectless tagged sentences. Language, 78(3),
453 – 481.
Kay, P., & Fillmore, C. J. (1999). Grammatical constructions and
linguistic generalizations: The what’s x doing y? construction.
Language, 75(1), 1 – 33.
Lambrecht, K., & Lemoine, K. (2005). Definite null objects in (spoken)
French: A construction grammar account. In H. C. Boas & M. Fried
(Eds.), Gram matical constructions: Back to the roots (pp. 157–199).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Levin, B., & Hovav, M. R. (2005). Argument realization (Vol. 10).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.‏
Pinker, S. (2013). Learnability and cognition, new edition: The
acquisition of argument structure. MIT press.‏
Rappaport Hovav, M., & Levin, B. (1998). Building verb meanings. In M
Butt & W. Geuder (Eds.), The projection of arguments: Lexical and
compositional factors (pp.97-134). Stanford, CA: Center for the Study
of Language and Information.
Riziq, D., & Hamdan, J. (2022). The semantic structure of motion verbs
in Jordanian Arabic: Talmy’s typology revisited’. Italian Journal of
Linguistics, 34(2), 143-169.‏
Ruppenhofer, J., & Michaelis, L. A. (2010). A constructional account
of genre based argument omissions. In Constructions and frames (Vol.
2, pp. 158 184). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Shopen, T. (1973). Ellipsis as grammatical indeterminacy. Foundations
of Language, 10, 65–77.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Doaa K. Riziq earned her PhD degree in Linguistics from the University
of Jordan. She is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the
Department of English Language and Translation at Applied Science
Private University (Amman, Jordan). Her current research interests are
in the field of Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Semantics,
Semantics-Syntax Interface, Pragmatics, Contrastive Linguistics and
Intercultural Communication.



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