Predicate-argument structure

Definition
Predicate-argument structure is another term for argument structure.

Morphology
Level of representation, which is part of the lexical representation of verbs (or adjectives), where the information about the theta-grid is decoded, and as such is part of the syntactic structure of verbs.

Example
One way to represent the predicate-argument structure (PAS) of the causative verb break is (i).

(i) break : &lt;Agent, Theme&gt;

In (i) break is specified as having an external argument ( Agent) and an internal argument ( Theme).

Links
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics