Noun
The simultaneous application of multiple predicates to a single argument, each selecting a distinct and normally incompatible facet of its meaning.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
- Examples
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More examples (2)
Consider, for instance, lunches. Lunches can be events but they are also meals and as such physical objects. As a result, lunch supports felicitous copredications in which one predicate selects for the event sense of lunch while the other selects for the physical object or meal sense.
Furthermore, the naturalness of copredication gives us another means of separating polysemy from lexical ambiguity, since polysemous expressions usually license copredication across different senses, but lexically ambiguous nouns do not (Asher, 2011). For instance, the lexically ambiguous noun party gives rise to zeugmatic effects when we attempt to copredicate across its senses.