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I have spent a lot of time thinking about the distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Failing to find a satisfying explanation in formal syntax, I am opening my mind to psycholinguistics. The question might reduce to the bigger question is: what is the psychological basis of the correct/incorrect distinction? When you read an incorrect sentence, you get a certain feeling, right? What is that feeling exactly? Is it similar to the disgust we feel towards rotting food? More likely, it is the same as the feeling we have towards someone that is not part of our social group. What do you think?

I found this paper which explores the issue, but is too technical for me.

Benjamin Grange
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  • "Failing to find a satisfying explanation in formal syntax" - could you tell us more about it? – Alex B. Aug 14 '21 at 18:04
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    Is your question about adjuncts versus arguments specifically, or about the psychological basis for considering a sentence grammatical vs ungrammatical? – Draconis Aug 14 '21 at 19:10
  • @Draconis It's about adjuncts versus arguments. But if you define "argument" as "that which, when removed, makes the sentence incomplete", then the one question reduces to the other. – Benjamin Grange Aug 14 '21 at 21:22
  • @AlexB I won't pretend that I've read everything there is on the topic. I'm just looking for an answer to the why question. We all have our intuitions about what's correct or incorrect, what's a complete sentence or incomplete sentence, but what's the basis of that? That's not something formal syntax addresses as far as I know. Feel freee to prove me wrong. – Benjamin Grange Aug 14 '21 at 21:26
  • Re: the second question (correct vs incorrect) Schütze The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/89 (open access), also https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0097.xml and https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-333 (there are tons of research on this btw) – Alex B. Aug 15 '21 at 13:30

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