Wanting, having, and getting: A note on Fodor and Lepore 1998

This article takes up Fodor and Lepore's (1998) account of the meaning of [want DP] structures, according to which the verb to have is introduced at interpretation. With certain DP complements a want to have DP paraphrase of want DP is ill formed; the correct paraphrase uses get or give. To allow for this, F&L would have to vary the introduced verb depending on the meaning of the DP, but this would make their proposal "co-compositional," defeating its original purpose. If have, get, and give all contain the abstract preposition P _HAVE (Harley 1995, Richards 2001), however, F&L's treatment may be appropriately revised: the element introduced by want is not have but P _HAVE. F&L can avoid co-compositionality at the price of allowing lexical decomposition.