In the sentence,
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
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.ofcoffee(y)
This interpretation is illustrated in Figure 7.