Bare Nominal Adjuncts

Larson (1985) and Emonds (1987) propose different mechanisms to account for English sentences in which a nominal acts as an adverbial but is not introduced by a preposition. We review their analyses and, in light of additional data, show that they are not tenable. Rather, we propose that the noun in such constructions is structurally deficient (hence does not need a preposition for Case) and has an inherent θ- role (hence does not need a preposition to assign one). Although in the same vein as Larson’s and Emonds’s proposals, ours accounts for a wider set of data and is thus preferable. It also has implications for the structure of θ-roles and for lexical entries.