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Container Nouns

In the sentence,

(6)  

John drank a cup of coffee.

John did not drink the cup; he drank the coffee. Similarly, in the following sentences, the real participant in the action designated by the main verb is not the grammatical object (or the object of ``with'') but the object of the preposition ``of''.

John ate a bag of potato chips.
John bought a tank of gas.
John visited a large number of friends last week.
John shook hands with a group of men.

Without coercion, the relevant part of the logical form of sentence (6) would be

$ Past(e_{1}) \& drink'(e_{1},j,x) \& cup(x) \& $of$(x,y)
\& $coffee(y)

That is, in the past there was a drinking event e1 by John j of a cup x where there is an ``of'' relation (to be pragmatically strengthened to ``contains'') between x and a portion of substance y describable as coffee. The cup does not satisfy the selectional constraints on the logical object of ``drink'' that it must be a liquid. The ``of'' relation between x and y is used to coerce the logical object from x to y.

This interpretation is illustrated in Figure 7.

  
Figure 7: Parse of ``John drank a cup of coffee.''
\begin{figure}
\par\setlength{\unitlength}{0.0125in} %
\begin{picture}
(400,411)...
...$,e_{1},$ {\bf v}$,j,$ {\bf n}$,x,$ {\bf n}$)$ }}}
\end{picture}\par\end{figure}


next up previous
Next: Distributive and Collective Readings Up: Syntax and Metonymy Previous: Neg-Raising
Jerry Hobbs
2000-07-20