Construction-based cumulation and adjunct extraction

Abstract

Previous HPSG accounts of extraction blur the distinction between valents and adjuncts by allowing verbs to lexically control the modifiers that combine with their phrasal projections. However, assuming that adjuncts are valents runs into various difficulties. This paper argues that the distinction between complements and adjuncts can be maintained, and that certain semantic phenomena that challenge traceless theories of extraction can be seen as an instance of a more general process. Finally, this paper also discusses a uniform mechanism for case assignment to valents and adverbial nominals.