one of its internal constituents such as the telic quale. In such a case, the same structural configuration in syntax can
correspond to a variety of configurations in conceptual structure, depending on the meanings of the words being
related.
We nowturn tosituations in whichbitsofa phrase's semanticcontentdo notcorrespond toanythingat allin syntactic
and phonological structure. Such cases of“enriched composition”show how the understanding of sentences is a rich
interaction between grammar, independent well-formedness conditions on conceptual structure, and the construal of
context. (These cases overlap closely with what Levinson 2000 terms“generalized conversational implicatures.”)
A goodfirst case is Nunberg's (1979) well-known example ofreference transfer, in which one waitress says to another:
(14) The ha msandwich over in the corner wants more coffee.If simple composition alone were used to construct the meaning of (14), the sentence would entail that some ham
sandwich has a desire, in violation of conceptual well-formedness. The intended interpretation can be paraphrased as
(15); the italicized words are parts not present in (14).
(15) Thepersonover in the cornercontextually associated with aha msandwich wants more coffee.There are three possible lines of approach to this example. Thefirst is to say thatham sandwichis lexicallypolysemous,
having an extra meaning‘person contextually associated with a ha msandwich,’perhaps derived by“lexical rule”from
theordinary meaning. But letus go back to the discussion of“lexical rules”in Chapter 6. One certainly does notstore
this extra meaning in long-term memory. Any word within the bounds of plausibility can be used freely in a reference
transfer. Therefore referencetransfer is a productiverather thansemiproductiveprocess and should notrequire lexical
listing.
A second line of approach is to dismiss this as“mere pragmatics,” not part of grammatical competence at all.
However, given that we are, after all, aspiring to account for contextualized meaning, we cannot get off the hook so
easily. In any event, it turns out that such an approach is insufficient: reference transfer has a striking interaction with
the use of reflexive pronouns, an indubitably grammatical phenomenon. Consider the following case (Jackendoff
1992b, based in part on Fauconnier 1985). Itis possibletouse thename of a character in a playor opera todenotethe
actor playing the role, as inTosca wasn't in very good voice tonight. This is also a reference transfer, though of a slightly
different sort than (14) (see Jackendoff 1992b for some of the different types). Now suppose Richard Nixon goes to
see the operaNixon in China, in which the character of Nixon is played by James Maddalena (yes, this is a real opera!).
We can then say: