Ancient History: adjuncts and complements

[lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group)]

Well, I've finally gone back to mail reading, and am finishing up April %^)

Adjuncts and complements were discussed by Ivan and Nick in several
postings there.  They seemed to agree that complements were like the
fixed places and adjuncts like the optional places.  (Or was that vice
versa?  %^)  The examples used had to do with French bridge builders
in various permutations.

On reading this through carefully, I'm not sure that I buy it.  In fact,
after writing this, I'm sure the theory is faulty for English as well.
I suspect that, in Lojban at least, the complement/adjunct distinction
MUST be tied to a sumti, and not to the main bridi, in order to be
realized.  (This seems to agree with what Nick said - that noun
complements can be expressed as a verb complement, but not noun
adjuncts.)  In most NL's of course, the predicate is a predication about
the subject; i.e. x1.  Thus the problem may truly be different for
Lojban in that the predicate stands completely apart syntactically from
the subject.  I thus conclude that NLs tell us little or nothing about
defined vs. optional places on the main bridi.

I believe that complements in Lojban are expressed principly through the
place structures (using be/bei), but if there is no convenient place,
they are expressible through relative clauses, most especially of the
noi type.  I don't think that "cripu zbasu poi/noi fraso" as a
complement runs into the problems that were posed in these old postings.

It may be that Lojban has no true noun adjuncts.  I do not think that
Lojban allows extraposition of information tied to a specific sumti.
Extraposition would appear to be the issue in the argument against "mi
nelci do semau ko'a" as attempt at either "I, more that ko'a is, am fond
of you", or "I am fond of you more than ko'a".  That this transform is
inherently illegal for any BAI attached with "pe" appears to indicate
that all ne/pe-attached sumti are complements.  (Though this is illegal,
I note that sometimes such a relative sumti appears to transform OK,
because we (at least English) speakers interpret it bridi level as some
type of generalization from the sumti to the whole bridi.  I would, by
the reason in this message say that the two are never LOGICALLY
equivalent, though they might be pragmatically so.)

Lojban of course does not allow preposing of a complement in a question,
since we don't ask questions that way.  No comparison is possible on
this point.

It might be that ALL non-subject objects (i.e. sumti), in a Lojban
predication, whether BAI-tagged or otherwise, are inherently adjuncts,
but that Lojban has simple no nounal transform of these.

But, quoting Nick:
>Noun with complement can be turned into verb with complement:  "student
>of physics" = "she studies physics".  Can't do with adjuncts (single
>predication).

This transform can be done with any be-attached sumti, whether BAI-tagged
or defined:
"le tadni be loi saskrfisiki"/"ko'a tadni loi saskrfisiki"
"le tadni be ca le prulamdei"/"ko'a tadni ca le prulamdei"
"le tadni sekai leka ciknysenva"/"ko'a tadni sekai leka ciknysenva"

This would make it appear that a "verbal complement" may really be a
misnomer for a "verbal adjunct", unless there is another transform not
mentioned by Nick that shows that verbal complements are distinct from
verbal adjuncts, since the Lojban has no implicit binding that says that
some sumti (BAI-tagged or otherwise) inherently are more tied to the
main predicate word-order-wise than others.  They can all be imported to
a specified selbri (using be/bei) equally.

But by any definition equating "be" places to complements then violates
another 'rule':
Due to the recursion of N' -> N' ADJ, you can pile on many adjuncts in arbitrary
order, but only one complement:
"the student with long arms with short hair"
"the student with short hair with long arms"
*"the student of Physics of Chemistry"

"le klama be le zarci bei ti" is a "complement" that violates this.
Indeed, I would question the truth of this rule for English in those
rare 3-place predicates of the language "the donor of the book to
charity" is two complements by all of Nick's rules except the one
forbidding two complements, contrasted to "the donor with red hair"
which involves an adjunct:

sometimes optional (true of both book and charity)
always optional (red hair)

tighter binding:
*the donor of the book with red hair.
*the donor to charity with red hair

turn into verb with complement:
She donated the book to charity
*She donated with red hair.

anaphorisation:
*the donor of the book to charity is taller than the one of the movie.
*the donor of the book to charity is taller than the one to LLG.
the donor with red hair is taller than the one with green hair.

pile on many adjuncts but only one complement (violated)

cannot coordinate with adjunct
*the donor of the book and with red hair
*the donor to charity and with red hair

cannot extrapose
*the donor came of the book
*the donor came to charity

Can prepose:
What kind of book did you donate?
What kind of charity did you donate to?

But finally, the bit about nouns controlling kinds of complements but
not adjuncts would appear to be violated by Lojban, which can in theory
stick any possible BAI place into a 'noun phrase' (Figuring out the
meaning may be another matter, of course, but I refuse to accept
otherwise.  I think the problem that leads to this rule in English is
that, since prepositions have variable meanings dependent on the lexeme,
when you draw in a preposition that is not part of the well-defined set,
you don't know which of the prepositional MEANINGS applies, hence you
label it as nonsense - and nonsense in English is inherently
ungrammatical.  A minor change to Nick's example shows this:  "*I'm a
student about physics"/"?I'm a student about the university." with
meaning associating with:  "*There is a student about physics"/"!There
is a student about the university." where the minor transform makes
plausible the meaning of "about"="in and around" which I believe is more
common in British English than American.

Nonsense in Lojban must always be grammatical, or it cannot be used for
logic.  That Nick's version of "cripu ke fraso zbasu" seems unlikely is
a failure of his imagination, not the language.  Veijo of course came up
with on interpretation, but in LOjban, this could possibly (if not
plausibly) be a bridge-like maker-of-French-things.  I parallel the
perfect English phrase "the chicken French chef", said of a person of
Irish ancestry who works in a French restaurant, and is cowardly in the
manner of a chicken".  Now sure, "the French chicken chef" seems more
plausible, but you would not make that transformation from the phrase I
gave first.

>If, however, you claim the relation between "French" and "builder" is
>other than adjunct (for example, a builder of French things)... well,
>even then I doubt you could claim the builder built bridges.
>
>The problem I'm having is, how can {cripu} be an adjunct. At this point,
>my Esperanto can help out; "ponta konstruanto" is not equivalent to
>"pontkonstruanto". The semantics of a bridge as an adjunct are still
>quite vague to me, though; the best I can see is "bridge" being a
>locative.

But you are presuming that both bridge and French fill the same place,
and I would agree that in such a case, "je" would be almost mandatory to
suggest that shared role, and by reflex "je" would always suggest that
the modifiers have the same relation to the modified (unlike "joi" which
might be other wise).

But they could both be 'complements' as you define them:  a builder of
bridges from French things or a builder of French things from bridges
would HAVE to be expressed as a tanru using "ke" rather than "je",
although these are both 'complements' by your definition.



There was debate a long time ago (pre-Lojban List) involving Nora, pc,
and me, on whether there was need for a "noi" equivalent at the
predicate level.  It is vaguely within my recollection that the word
'complement' came up in that discussion, but I'm not sure.  I believe
that pc did not think it was necessary to have such an equivalent,
possibly for the reasons I describe above - he and Nora both felt that
people who felt the urge to noi/poi the main bridi (a frequent beginners
mistake perhaps because of the complement/adjunct stuff - which thus
may inform our teaching of the subject) could express it as a
bridi/sentential logical connection:

x1 cripu zbasu gi'e fraso
x1 cripu zbasu .ije le go'i cu fraso

So maybe we should bump all this to pc for comment.  He still expects to
become on-line sometime this summer.  They've installed his computer at
work but haven't yet installed the Ethernet that will have a net
connection.