We ask whether more argument-like phrases appear closer to their syntactic
heads crosslinguistically via comparison of the Principle of Argument
Closer and the Principle of Argument Precedence. We use as test cases
constructions with VP instances that have one direct object NP and one PP
dependent appearing on the same side *(Kobe praised [NP his oldest daughter
] [PP from the stands ]* vs. *Kobe praised [PP from the stands] [NP his
oldest daughter ].* The two principles make the same prediction when the
two dependents occur postverbally, whereas they work against each other
when the two dependents occur preverbally. Overall, we show there is more
ordering flexibility of the NP and the PP and weaker predictive power of
argumenthood status in preverbal domains.
**Any comments, questions and criticism are more than welcome! Come chat with me on Google hangout (yiliu@ucdavis.edu) if you'd like.**