Many theorists have held, at least as an idealization, that every phrase--and in particular, every verb phrase--consists of (i) an expression semantically associated with some function, and (ii) an expression semantically associated with some element in the domain of that function. On this view, which makes it comfortable to speak of both verbs and functions as taking arguments, each phrase is semantically associated with the value of the relevant function given the relevant argument(s); the semantic contribution of natural language syntax is function-application; and the meaning of a sentence S is determined by the meanings of S's constituents, in the way that the sum of two numbers is determined by those numbers and the addition function. But some recent work suggests that at least many phrases are concatenations of predicates, where a complex predicate of the form "F^G" is satisfied by those things that satisfy both "F" and "G". On the strongest version of this view, which is motivated by certain eventish hypotheses about the logical forms of natural sentences, the semantic contribution of syntactic branching is predicate-conjunction and not function-application. Mixed views are also possible. I'll consider a series of phenomena (including serial-verb constructions) that tell in favor the predicate-conjunction view.