The Pragmatics of Obligatory Adjuncts

The existence of obligatory adjuncts in both predication and modification constructions is best understood as following from general conversational pragmatics, rather than from grammatical factors. In the case of clausal predication, adjuncts are used to satisfy the often-cited requirement that every utterance have a focus that serves to convey new information in the discourse; adjuncts are just one of several ways in which the focal requirement can be satisfied. We argue that as a pragmatic constraint, the focal requirement is derivative from Grice’s maxim of quantity or Horn’s R-principle. This allows us to account for the fact that while utterances do normally require a successful focus, there can be certain principled exceptions. The appeal to conversational maxims also allows us to account for the appearance of obligatory adjuncts within nominal modification structures, in which focus is not the relevant notion.*

Introduction

Consider the contrasting clauses with short passives in 1 and nominal modification structures in 2, presented by Grimshaw and Vikner (1993). When uttered in a ‘neutral’ context, adjuncts are required in order to avoid a sense of anomaly: impressionistically, 1a and 2a seem to demand that something more be said, while 1b and 2b somehow seem to satisfy this demand.

1. 1.

   1. a. #This house was built.

   2. b. This house was built last year.

2. 2.

   1. a. #a built house

   2. b. a recently built house

We will examine the distribution and motivation for the presence of adjuncts such as last year and recently, which appear to license examples 1b and 2b. We begin with a critical examination of an event-based account of obligatory adjuncts proposed by Grimshaw & Vikner 1993 and then we develop an alternative pragmatic account. We argue that the existence of ‘obligatory adjuncts’ in both predication and modification is best understood as following from general conversational pragmatics; no grammatical stipulation is necessary.

In the case of clausal predication, adjuncts can be used to satisfy the often-cited requirement that every utterance have a focus that serves to convey new information in the discourse; adjuncts are just one of several ways in which the focal requirement can be satisfied. It is argued that, as a pragmatic constraint, the focal requirement is derivative from Grice’s maxim of quantity or Horn’s R-principle. This allows us to account both for the fact that utterances do normally require a successful information focus, and for the fact that there are certain principled exceptions. The conversational maxims also allow us to account for the appearance of obligatory adjuncts with nominal modification structures, in which focus is not a relevant notion. The basic insight informing the pragmatic account is that predication or modification of an argument is licensed only when it is informative in the discourse context.

Our account aims to provide a unified explanation of the apparent necessity of adjuncts in a variety of constructions including middles and cognate objects as in 3 and 4, as well as short passives and the adjectival past participle construction in 1 and 2 above.

1. 3.

   1. a. #This book reads.

   2. b. This book reads easily.

2. 4.

   1. a. #Pat laughed a laugh.

   2. b. Pat laughed a hearty/quiet laugh.

A single utterance may be judged acceptable or unacceptable depending on the context evoked. We use the pound sign to indicate that an utterance is acceptable only in certain contexts, which may not come immediately to mind. Since every acceptable sentence evokes a certain context of use, what distinguishes sentences marked by a pound sign from those that are fully acceptable is therefore a matter of degree. The only real difference is that some contexts are more general or easily accessible than others. In the text below, we refer to contexts that are very general and easily evoked as neutral contexts, but it should be borne in mind that the idea of a neutral context is only an idealization (Dinsmore 1981, Langacker 1987, Lambrecht 1994).

1. An event-structure account

Grimshaw & Vikner 1993 represents a surprisingly rare effort to account for the contrasts in examples 1 and 2. Their proposal relies on a particular interpretation of accomplishment predicates...