Chapter 12 Phrasal Semantics

This chapterisconcernedwithhowthemeaning ofa phraseor sentenceiscomposed, usinginpartthemeaningsofits
words. An account of phrasal semantics is in a sense the most demanding overall task for grammatical theory: the
whole point of having a grammar is in order to express phrasal semantics, and practicallyevery resource of the system
ends up playing a role. Thus it is also afitting end for the present study, in that it allows us to bring many different
threads of our discussion together.

We begin with the simplest cases, in which the word meanings plus the syntactic structure are sufficient to determine
therelevantaspects ofphrasalmeaning. Wecontinuetomoreelaboratecases wherephrasal and sentencemeaningtake
ona lifeoftheir own, incorporatingelements notpresent inthewords. We thenmotivatedividingconceptual structure
into tiers, along the lines of phonological structure, each tier conveying a different aspect of sentence meaning. We
conclude with a brief foray beyond the sentence, asking what makes larger units such as conversations and narratives
cohere.

12.1 Simple composition

The simplest cases of phrasal combination in semantics fall into three types: variable satisfaction, modification, and
lambda extraction. Ineach ofthese cases, themeaningcomes entirelyfrom thewordsinthephrase plus some minimal
structural organization.

12.1.1 Argument satisfaction

Chapters5 and 11 havealready presented oneofthemajor ways that wordmeanings combine intosentencemeanings:
through satisfaction of argument structure. The standard case involves verbs. As shown in section5.8, a verb typically
expresses a conceptual function of zero to four open variables; these variables are