plausible but ungrammatical.”^69 The object can be omitted without noticeably changing meaning, provided the object's
modifiers can be converted into adverbials, as inSlim slept deeply, Kathy coughed violently. Again this suggests that the
object is a supernumerary syntactic argument, this time duplicating not the subject but the verb.
With these exceptions as a caution, generalization (41) holds most of the time: the number of syntactic arguments is
almost always equal to or smaller than the number of semantic arguments.^70
5.9.2 Category of syntactic arguments
Next comes thequestionwhether a semanticargumentis expressed as an NP, AP, PP, or clause.To some extentthisis
predictable from the semantic argument. For the clearest example, suppose the semantic argument denotes a concrete
object (including a person). As observed in section 5.5, only NPs can express concrete objects, so the corresponding
syntactic argument has to be an NP. On the other hand, properties can be expressed by APs and predicate NPs
(though not by clauses) (44a), and propositions can be expressed directly by clauses and mentioned by using NPs
(though not APs) (44b).
The alternating arguments in (44) have been matched as closely as possible for semantics, so that we can with some
justification say that the same semantic argument is expressed by different syntactic categories. Thus we can say that
the verb specifies only the semantic properties of its argument and specifies nothing about the syntax of the
corresponding syntactic argument.
On the other hand, some verbs allow only one or the other of these syntactic argument types.
140 ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATIONS
(^69) This case must not be confused withsing a song, wheresong is a real direct object and can be replaced byaria, tune,“Stardust,”and so forth.
(^70) John objected to his innocence means something else—the PP expresses a different semantic argument of the verb.