 Second, both search verbs and desire verbs create specific-unspecific ambiguities in their containing VPs when the syntactic object of the verb consists in a determiner followed by a nominal (this ambiguity is also known as the relational/notional ambiguity, following Quine 1956, where it was first studied, at least in the modern period). For example, ‘Oedipus is seeking a member of his family’ could be true because Oedipus is seeking specifically Jocasta, who is a member of his family, though he doesn’t realize it. On such an occasion, what is true can be more carefully stated as ‘there is a member of his family such that Oedipus is seeking that person’. The alternative, unspecific or notional reading, is forced by adding ‘but no particular one’: ‘Oedipus is seeking a member of his family, but no particular one’. Here Oedipus is implied just to have a general intention to find some member or other of his family. Contrast the extensional ‘embrace’: Oedipus cannot embrace a member of his family, but no particular one. 