Master of Arts

thesisWhile the majority of linguistic theories concerned with semantic interpretation assume some form of compositionalityâ€"the notion that the meaning of a complex expression comes from the meanings of its constituent parts and their structural arrangementâ€" several linguistic phenomena exist which seem to challenge (strict) compositionality on both theoretical and empirical grounds. One such phenomena, termed complement coercion, has gained considerable attention in psycholinguistic research in recent years, as these constructions appear not only to involve a semantic type-mismatch, but also interpretive properties which are not overtly expressed. Given recent arguments that the so-called “coercion verbs†may not constitute a homogeneous set with respect to the processing of coercion constructions, the present thesis conducts an experimental investigation into the empirical validity of this claim, reporting evidence that appears to challenge it. The findings that both aspectual and psychological verbs display evidence of complement coercion are discussed in terms of their implications for competing hypotheses