| Summary: | The aim of this paper is to critically examine the tests used to distinguish arguments from adjuncts in Functional Generative Description (Sgall et al., 1986) and to question the general usefulness of this distinction. In particular, we demonstrate that neither of the two tests used in FGD to distinguish inner participants from free adverbials (i.e. tests based on iterability and specificity) stands up to scrutiny, and we also point out practical problems with the application of the dialogue test, used to distinguish semantically obligatory and semantically optional dependents. Since these tests are among the most frequently cited tests for the Argument-Adjunct Distinction in contemporary linguistics, these results cast a shadow on the general validity of this dichotomy.
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