This is really not ready for prime-time musings, but it’s mid-afternoon so maybe that’s OK.

What exactly does (1) mean?

(1) Jack went to the doctor.

It’s tempting to think the LF of (1) is just the same as the LF of (2), except that we have a DD in place of a name.

(2) Jack went to Coventry.

But I don’t think that’s right. For one thing (1a) seems like a much worse paraphrase than (2a).

(1a) The doctor is such that Jack went to him or her.
(2a) Coventry is such that Jack went to it.

Superficially, it seems that (1) is a slightly conventionalised way of saying that Jack had a medical check-up or appointment or something of the sort. As some evidence for this, note the difference between (3) and (4) in terms of whether they imply Jack and Jill visited the same doctor/game.

(3) Jack went to the doctor and so did Jill.
(4) Jack went to the game and so did Jill.

It’s almost tempting to say that “the doctor” denotes here something other than the individual Jack went to, denotes the class of doctors or doctors’ offices or the like. Tempting, but surely false, for we can have anaphoric pronouns antecedent on ‘the doctor’, as in “this Bob Dylan line”:http://bobdylan.com/songs/ww3.html.

(5) I went to the doctor the very next day
     To see what kinda words he could say.
     He said it was a bad dream.

So I’m just confused. Maybe I should learn to live with (1a) as a paraphrase of (1) and give a pragmatic explanation for the differences between (3) and (4).