Many of you will have seen these issues hashed out to death, but I’m not entirely up to speed on the literature, so I thought I’d ask the audience for some advice. The questions will all be about variants on (1), which is itself a version of a hackneyed example of zeugma.

(1) ??She drove home in a red Porsche and a fit of despair.

I take it that this shows that one of the words in “She drove home in” is ambiguous. The first question is, which one? Here’s one argument that it should be “in”. If we posit an ambiguity in any of the other words, we’ll have to posit a matching ambiguity in one or more of the words in (2).

(2) ??He flew to work in a Lear jet and a fit of despair.

Does that seem like an argument that it’s ‘in’ that is ambiguous?

Second question, for those with more knowledge of languages than I. Is this ambiguity common across languages, or do other languages have different words for the different senses of ‘in’? (Assuming they even have a word that plays just this role.) I assume that for at least some of the examples of zeugma “David Dowty has collected here”:http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~dowty/683/dative-ambiguity, the ambiguity replicates across languages, but with my little knowledge I can’t really be sure.

Third question, related to the second. Consider all the instances of (3),

(3) She drove home in a X and a Y

where X and Y are distinct members of the set {red Porsche, blue dress, fit of despair, hailstorm}. Which of these are zeugmatic?

My instinct is to say _all of them_, though the red Porsche/blue dress pair doesn’t seem as bad as the others. Does this suggest ‘in’ is (at least) four-ways ambiguous? (At least because I’m sure it isn’t too hard to extend this list.)

UPDATE: I was working on extending the set mentioned above when I came across some odd data. It seems to me that both (4) and (5) are fine.

(4) She drove home in four hours.
(5) She drove home in record time.

The ‘record’ in (5) has to be contextually set, but it’s perfectly intelligible. But (6) seems odd.

(6) ?She drove home in four hours and record time.

You can say (7), though it seems a little pompous.

(7) She drove home in a record time of four hours.

But it seems a stretch to me to say that ‘in’ is ambiguous between a meaning where ‘four hours’ is an acceptable extension and one where ‘record time’ is. Needless to say, ‘four hours’ and ‘record time’ both produce zeugmatic responses when paired with any of the other members of the set. So ‘in’ looks to be five or six way ambiguous so far.

Surprisingly, (8) seems to me to be not OK, assuming her whole drive was inside the borders of New York.

(8) She drove home in New York.

But (9) is fine, and it isn’t clear that ‘in’ here means the same as in any of the above usess.

(9) She drove quickly in New York and slowly in Massachusetts.