Distributional analysis of copredication: towards distinguishing systematic polysemy from coercion

In this paper we argue that the account of the notion of complex type based on copredication tests is problematic,because copredication is possible,albeit less frequent, also with expressions which exhibit polysemy due to coercion.We show through a distributional and lexico-syntactic pattern-based corpus analysis that the variability of copredication contexts is the key to distinguish complex types nouns from nouns subject to coercion