Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 08:05:00 EDT From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.EDU> Subject: Name that syntagm The term you are looking for (or at least one of them), when the compositional semantics does not add up to the pragmatic meaning (or illocutionary force) is indirect speech act. When one finds these (and even direct speech acts and other matters misinterpreted cross-linguistically, the generally agreed upon area of study appears to be interlanguage pragmatics. This ought to convince people that there are linguists out there. At least we have a code. Dennis Preston <22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.edu>