Lise Fontaine On The Distinction Between Complement And Adjunct

Lise Fontaine wrote to Sysfling on 16 August 2023 at 10:59:

Ed is making a very important point here and one that is often overlooked. I think linguistics generally has seen a lot of damage from imposed boundaries around ideas. Even a distinction between Complement and Adjunct is not always clear, especially as concerns spatial reference. There is great benefit in being open-minded about accounts and not being afraid to be wrong sometimes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. The distinction between Complement and Adjunct is clear on theoretical criteria. Difficulty only arises when the theory is not understood.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 153, 154, 155):

A Complement is an element within the Residue that has the potential of being Subject but is not; … Any nominal group not functioning as Subject will be a Complement (with the exception of certain circumstantial Adjuncts of Extent realised by nominal groups without the preposition for, e.g. 180 miles in he sailed 180 miles north on the Company’s armed schooner); and this includes nominal groups of one type which could not function as Subject as they stand, namely those with adjective as Head …

An Adjunct is an element that has not got the potential of being Subject; … (As noted above, certain circumstantial Adjuncts of Extent may be realised by nominal groups without the preposition for; contrast he had walked for miles with he had walked four miles.)

Fontaine's difficulty arises from taking the Formalist view 'from below' (forms: nominal group vs prepositional phrase) instead of the Functionalist view 'from above' (functions: Complement vs Adjunct). That is, the view 'from below' decodes forms by reference to functions, whereas the view 'from above' encodes functions by reference to forms. In other words, the view 'from below' begins with expressions and asks what they mean, whereas the view 'from above' begins with meanings and asks how they are expressed.

[2] To be clear, here Fontaine again engages in her promotion of the culture of anti-intellectualism (see here), reframing it as open-mindedness. Being afraid of being wrong is vitally important for producing high quality work, whether in academic publications or school exams. Ethically, not being afraid of being wrong is a licence to tell lies.