7.6 Oblique Arguments

1. An oblique argument is an argument of a relation that is marked with a preposition. (Syntactically, oblique arguments aren't direct arguments; that is, they aren't subjects or direct objects or second objects).
2. An oblique argument almost always carries an existential entailment:

   

3. [ To whom ] did John reply t?	To whom moves as a unit.
   [ Her emails ] were always replied to t at once ?	Her emails passivizes like a Direct Object.

4. Very often: Verb + Preposition behaves like one relation: reply_to
   $$\mathrm{\:reply\_to\:}(\mathrm{\:j\:},\:\mathrm{\:m\:})$$
   We will call these argument-marking prepositions
5. Other cases (argument marking preposition in bold)

   	Example	Relation-name	$\exists$-ent.
   (a)	John applied (for the job).	apply_for	yes
   (b)	John relied *(on Mary).	rely_on	yes
   (c)	John gave the book *(to Mary.)	give (tradition!)	yes
   (d)	John sent the book (to Mary.)	send	yes

   As these examples show, if a PP is obligatory, that is a pretty good sign the preposition is argument-marking.
6. Now consider sit

   (a)	John sat under the table.
   (b)	John sat in the chair.
   (c)	John sat in the hall.
   (d)	John sat on the couch.
   (e)	John sat on the table.

   If these sentences have one relation each, it's got to be a different one in each sentence.

   But to say that would be to miss that there is something common going on in each. Our clue is the existential entailment:

   

   What is entailed is that there is something supporting John's seated position. Hence the basic relation seems to be sit_on:

   $$\mathrm{\:sit\_on\:}(\mathrm{\:j\:},\mathrm{\:the\: table\:})$$
   But what about the others?
   $$\begin{array}[t]{l} \text{John is sitting under the tree.} \... ...dge \mathrm{\:under\:}(x,\:\mathrm{\:the\: tree\:}) \end{array}$$