In linguistics, predicate transferG. Nunberg, "Transfers of Meaning", ''Journal of Semantics'', 1995 - Oxford Univ Press is the reassignment of a property to an object which would not otherwise inherently have that property. Thus, the expression "''I am parked out back''" conveys the meaning of "parked" from "car" to the property of "I possess a car". This avoids incorrect

polysemous Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single ...

interpretations of "parked": that "people can be parked", or that "I am pretending to be a car", or that "I am something which can be parked". This is supported by the

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

: "''We are parked out back''" does not mean that there are multiple cars; rather, that there are multiple passengers (having the property of being in possession of a car).

References

Lexical semantics Psycholinguistics