C roatian repository for the argument/adjunct distinction – SARGADA (2022)

Abstract: The distinction between arguments and adjuncts is a relevant topic in many linguistic theories (Tesniere, 1959; Chomsky, 1981; Langacker, 1987; Van Valin, 2001; Herbst, 2014, etc.). Even though theories provide similar definitions of arguments and adjuncts, sometimes it is difficult to draw a clear line between them. In order to determine ambiguous syntactic parts as arguments or adjuncts, various tests have been proposed, but they often give contradictory results and are not fully reliable. Nevertheless, they can be used as an auxiliary tool. The project Syntactic and Semantic Analysis of Arguments and Adjuncts in Croatian – SARGADA was launched with the aim of thoroughly investigating the distinction between arguments and adjuncts in Croatian, and to apply the theoretical results in a syntactic repository which would be a valuable resource for improving NLP tools and for researching and teaching Croatian. In this paper, we will present diagnostic tests chosen as a tool to distinguish between arguments and adjuncts in the Croatian language. The repository containing sentences with ambiguous syntactic phrases and our workflow will also be described.

## diagnostic tests as has already been stated, there is no consensus on which tests should be used to distinguish arguments and adjuncts. in this paper, we will present tests chosen as a tool for distinguishing arguments and adjuncts in the repository. dependency grammar uses, for example, the omission test, the implication test, the do so test, the paraphrase with dependent clause, and the this happened test. generative grammar uses structure preservation/changeability after operation, the do so test, extraction from wh-islands, iterativity, etc. cognitive grammar uses the methodological principle of conceptual (in)dependence. in the repository, roughly speaking, the omission test, the implication test, the this happened test, and the substitution test are taken from dependency grammar; the do so test and extraction from whislands are taken from generative grammar; and the dialogue and iterativity test come from functional generative description. a few other tests were considered, but it was decided not to include them because they are not applicable to croatian or not relevant (the dialogue test, paraphrase with a dependent clause, etc.). ## conclusion the paper presents the theoretical and applied part of the sargada project. the approach to distinguishing between argument and adjunct is presented in the first part of the paper. arguments 8 online publishing on the internet would be the minimum goal of creating a repository, and the added value would be, for example, the development of an application programming interface (api) of the sargada repository with other linguistic resources of the institute of croatian language and linguistics (or other research groups). this project is important for a better understanding of the argument/adjunct distinction both cross-linguistically and with regard to croatian and cognate languages. in addition, our research is also important for croatian studies since the examined syntactic phrases had not previously been exhaustively described and their status was not unambiguously solved within croatian linguistic literature. the repository of sentences that is freely available online will be of use in several segments of society (a tool for teaching and studying croatian, or for improving natural language processing tools).