Passivization Involves Changing Of Active Sentences

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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Argument structure in syntax is a term that came into use in the 1980s in America. The phrase is used to render the concept that the European had on clause syntax. They refer to it as valency. A valency describes the type of clause can be used together with a word. The argument structure acts as a border between the syntax and semantics of the verb or the predictor. The argument structure determines the information on the type argument. It involves the type of the syntax, the number of arguments, and the hierarchical organization that is needed to map to the structure. (Bresnan 2001) Argument structure refers to the lexical representation of grammatical information on the verb. The a-structure of a lexical item is considered as a lexical entry (Grimshaw 1990).

Argument Structure in linguistics is an interface between lexical syntax and lexical semantics. It puts together an original and highly analytical supposition of argument structure that accounts for a large number of observable facts of syntactic. This area interests the linguistics who focuses on the nature of language and forms of the representation of forms of linguistics. In addition, the psychologist who is interested in the language acquisition in children find the field of argument structure useful. The main analytical focus on argument structure is on passives, nominal, psychological predicates, and the theory of external arguments (Grimshaw 1990).

Argument structure is an essential field of linguistics. It is seen as transitional between semantic-role structure and syntactic function organization. Semantic roles have a lot of information that is not important for the syntax, whereas argument structure focuses on the syntactic applicable information. Lexical level of information ignores changes in the syntactic - function process such as Passivization.

Passivization involves changing of active sentences to passive voice and vice verse.

Example, The man paid the rent. Changing this sentence into a passive voice will read; The rent was paid by the man. The sentences in the above example have different surface-syntactic grammatical relations, but they are similar in argument. The difference between arguments and the adjuncts is important theories of syntax and grammar. Argument structure behaves in a different manner from the adjuncts. The theories such as of binding, ellipsis, discontinuities, and coordination must recognize and base on distinction. In examining this area of syntax, it is realized that arguments consistently behave in a different way from the adjuncts. Without the differences, the capability to understand and understand the facts of syntactic would be hindered.

The key issue in argument structure in syntax is in the amount and the nature of information presented in the lexical representations. Another issue is the function of these lexical representations in syntactic structures. Neo-constructionist ways of inquiry represent an idea of non-lexicalist ways approaching the argument structure in syntax (Borer 2005, Hale & Keyser 1993, Arad 1998, and Marantz 1997). The most applicable ways of approaching this idea are to depart from the lexicon of possibly all grammatical content. The vacating does not affect the core functional vocabulary. It argues that debates that the lexical roots are associated with individual semantic information. If the is viewed in this manner, the argument structure phenomena will arise straight from the syntax of the language. The content of roots that are encyclopedic will play an insignificant role in determining the contents. The differences in the approaches of arguments structure maintain the conception of an active and a grammatically rich word list.

It argues that, it has an important role in the realization argument (Butt 1995). The distinct interface level between the theoretical lexicon and syntax in these approaches conceived argument structure. Butt argues that the argument structure is a lexical subject in particular respects. The syntax may play a well-defined role in its determination. According to Reinhart(2002) and Siloni (2005), to parameterize some of the argument structure operations along the lexicon or syntax divide in part a lexical and in syntactic matter other than linguist like Ramchand (2008), has a believe that even if argument structure is in syntax, lexical roots carries syntactic characteristics. The characteristics are significant to their syntactic realization.

There is a difference in the semantic structure and the syntactic ones. To express a semantic structure, a relation called predicate argument structure is used. This relation is based on the function features of the lection entity. The lexicon is often a verb. The function feature that bases the predicate argument structure determines the thematic role that a word plays in a sentence. However, the thematic role of a word in a sentence and the function feature do not always overlap. The role in a sentence a predicate is to specify the relationship between concrete or abstract objects. It also states what characteristics an object has. For example, [read (girl, book)] ‘The girl read the book’. A predicate can also be a property. For example [intelligent )], ‘the boy is intelligent or a clever boy’.

The argument refers to the real objects in the real world that are predicated some of the times. They are placed in parentheses after the predicate. Consider the following sentences as examples.

Ann wrote on Jane’s book (with her pen)

Ann’s pen wrote on Jane’s book

Jane’s book was written.

Jane’s book was written (by Ann)

In the above-mentioned examples, the head write has an argumentative structure. The structure stimulates a compulsory one-argument position. The position is the theme. There is also presented the two more optionally positions that are an agent and instrument. For example, Write (Ann Book Pen); Ann is the agent, Book is the theme, and Pen is the instrument. This can be represented as follow OPEN <Ag, Th, Instr>.

The concept of Davidsonian and Neo-Davidsonian representations highlights important aspects on argument structure. In his works, (Davidson 1967) suggests that, for representation of a verbal meaning, an event variable is fundamental. In his views, Davidson suggested the following representation [buttering (e, Jones, the toast)] of such a sentence as Jones buttered the toast. He shows the events of buttering of which John is the Agent and the toast is the Theme. He argues the events representations works best to capture the vital reactions that are entailed in the sentence of the example. If there is a modifier, the entailment follows. The modifiers are linked by the use of conjunctions. In this case, the entailment suffer removal if in the case where the reduction is of the conjunction happens.

The original proposal of Davidsonian combined the argument structure and the thematic argument together. The combination was in logical form. When Neo-Davidsonian proposal was introduced, the distinction between the event argument and the thematic arguments was the introduced. The Neo-Davidsonian argues the predicate is monadic. What the theory means by monadic is that the argument structures only have one argument called the event argument. Using this approach to classify verbs in the argument structure, in can be concluded that the predicate can be classified in a way that suggests that the event argument forms the lexical item. For this conclusion of the Neo-Davidsonian to be effective, it is required that one insists on the fact explaining verbs and their gerunds are not in any way of the same meanings (Parsons (1990).

The implications of K. Demuth study on the Argument structure and the acquisition of Sesotho applicative shows the issues of semantic vs. syntactic in language acquisition. In the study, in was noted that children have some understanding of the facts that morphemes, which are applicative, adds arguments to the verb and the predicate. In this revelation, children at the stage of acquiring language appear to the semantic of the varying classes of verbs. They seem to have an innate understanding of the semantics of the construction.

In conclusion, the argument structure may be used to understand the process of language acquisition in children. A semantic representation that establishes the number and hierarchy of syntactic arguments falls in the entry of the verb in the lexicon. The thematic relation in a sentence should be approved in a sentence due identification of thematic roles. The relation highlights the position of the theme and has the agent and the instrumental parts. In the argument structure, the verb phrase may be predicted directly from the lexicon depending on the hierarchy. The formal representation also restricts morph-syntactic-realization of arguments in a nontrivial manner. Various lexical processes can affect the argument structure of the predicates in a sentence.