A more potent argument that modification cannot be reduced to predicate conjunction is that many modifiers do not
modifytheirhost as a whole, but rather one of its qualia. For instance, agood knifeis not something that is botha knife
and good, as thesimplepredicatelogictranslationwouldhaveit.Ratheritisa knifethatcutswell,thatis, thatservesthe
proper functionof kniveswell.Hencegoodactuallymodifies thetelicqualeofknife. Similarly, afast typistis notsomeone
whoisfast, but someone whotypesfast, where the telic quale oftypistis the function or occupation of typing (section
11.9). And atrain at 10:00is notsomethingthat is a trainand thatis at 10:00, but a trainthatleavesor arrives at 10:00,
where leaving and arriving are part of the telic quale fortrain. For another sort of case, we remarked in section 11.6
that size modifiers are relativized to the standard size of their hosts: abig mouseis smaller than asmall elephant. This
suggests that the modifier is attached within the constitutive quale, which records standard sizes.
This option of attaching modifiers inside qualia structure is widely and systematically available; it is based on the
interaction of the noun's and modifier's meanings. These interactions constitute oneof Pustejovsky's (1995) important
pieces ofevidenceforqualiastructure.Pustejovskybuilds a formal descriptionofqualiastructure,ina formalism quite
different fro mthe one here. A full adaptation is beyond the scope of the present work, though a hint will appear in
section 12.1.4.^200
12.1.3 Lambda extraction and variable binding
A further technique of phrasal combination is necessary to build, for example, the meaning of relative clauses.
Consider a phrase likethe man who Beethoven likes. This contains two departures fro mwhat we have done so far. First,
thesecond argument oflikeis notsatisfied in thenormal fashion by a directobject; rather thisargument is satisfied by
the relative pronounwho. Second, the relativeclause functions as a modifier ofman. But connecting it as a modifier, in
the style of (8) and (10), would be incoherent: an Event on its own cannot add further specification toman. Rather, a
relative clause identifies an individual by virtue of his/her participationin theSituation(State or Event) denoted by the
clause.“Beethovenlikes someone:that'sthe person we're interested in.”The second argument oflikeis understood as
this designated individual. And it is being this individual that further characterizesthe man.
Semantic theory therefore needs a means of picking out such designated individuals.
384 SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
(^200) See Jackendoff (1997a : ch. 3) for an account of adjectives such asfake andalleged, which modify their nouns in a still different fashion.