The Grammatical structure of adjuncts

Abstract

In this article, we provide a general view about adjuncts’ features. Adjuncts have different grammatical properties; we describe the general contemporary assumption about the category adjunct. In this respect is relevant to note that according to semantics, syntax and pragmatics, the adjunct is an heterogeneous grammatical category. Adjuncts are coded, not only in bounded forms, but also in lexical, phrasal and sentence forms. According to the syntactic criteria, this unit has specific properties. Adjuncts are not grammatical relations such as subject or object (direct or indirect). These are not related to the lexical semantic representation of the verb. They modify different layers of the clause, they move freely along the sentence, and in some cases, its position in the sentence has word order constraints. Adjuncts must be coded morphologically like incorporations, reduplications, compositions, derivations, conversion and suprasegmental characteristics (the positioning of the pitch and tone). Adjuncts code specific thematic relations like: recipient, instrument, location and goal; meanwhile agent, experiencer, patient, theme and stimulus are coded basically by grammatical relations.