Abstract

The paper argues for a model of polysemy based on the blueprint offered by Paul Pietroski whereby the meaning of a lexical item is an instruction to fetch a concept from an address. We show that the bare idea of fetching admits of a deep construal, where a concept is fetched, and a shallow construal, where the instruction merely links a lexical item to an address without automatically retrieving anything from the address; retrieval only occurs when the item is embedded within a syntactic structure. We offer considerations in favour of the shallow construal, which is consistent with a root conception of lexical items.