absent fro mthe signal. Again, in this case, the hearer is cued to the need for coercion by the ill-for medness of the
simple reading.^204
There is actually some psycholinguistic evidence for this conclusion. Piñango et al. (1999) asked subjects to listen to
sentences like (20) for comprehension; they tested the subjects for processing load afteruntilwas heard, at a point in
time that comported with semantic rather than syntactic composition (about 250 msec, afteruntil). Subjects revealed
more load in thejumpsentences than in thesleepsentences, suggesting the construction of a more complex meaning.
Piñango (1999) also tested aphasics with an offline task involving this construction. Broca's aphasics, whose semantics
is preserved but whose syntax is impaired, were able to answer whether Sam jumped one or many times. By contrast,
Wernicke's aphasics, whose syntax is passable but whose semantic integration is disrupted, answered at chance.
Though there are otherinterpretations of boththelinguisticfactsand the experiments, this is a case where a particular
competence theory did make predictions about an experimentaloutcome; it is notclear thatthis can be said for any of
the other interpretations.^205
Section 6.6 introduced the idea of constructional idioms—pieces of syntactic structure that bear inherent meaning.
These too can be profitably viewed as instances of enriched composition. Consider examples of constructional idioms
such as (22).
(22)
a. Ki mcooked the pot black. [Resultative]
b. The train rumbled down the tracks. [Sound emission+motion]
c. Nora knitted the afternoon away. [Time-away]None of the words in these sentences account for our understanding that Kimcausedthe pot tobecomeblack, that the
traintraveleddown the tracks, and that
392 SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
(^204) However, there exist cases in which the hearer needs some extrinsic contextual cue. For instance,Bill kept crossing the street is ambiguous between‘Bill crossed the street
repeatedly’and‘Billcontinuedtoward theothersideofthestreet.’Thefirstoftheseis thecoercedrepetitionreadingwehavejustbeendiscussing;thesecondis anothertype
ofaspectualcoercion.Theneed forcoercionis signaledbythefactthatkeeprequires anongoing processas itscomplement,andcross the streetisbounded. However, having
established the need for coercion, the hearer must still determine from contextwhich coercion is appropriate to the situation. A similar case isBill drank two beers last night,
which may mean either of the coerced readings‘two glasses/bottles of beer’or‘two kinds of beer.’
(^205) In particular, we show that the experimental results are not what one would expect on an accountjumpas lexically polysemous between single and multiple jumps.Another
exampleof enriched composition involvesPustejovsky's (1995) co-compositionin sentenceslikeJohnfinished the book, which,as pointed out in section11.9, is understood as
‘Johnfinishingreadingthebook.’Thesecases toohavereceivedsome psycholinguisticinvestigation: McElreeetal.(2001) foundthatreadingtime forsuchsentencesshows a
characteristic lengthening by comparison withJohn bought the book, which is understood by simple composition.