?*Lui Faire Téléphoner Quelqu'Un D'Autre

After a survey of the problems connected with the French faire + Infinitive construction and the ways that have been proposed in the literature to explain them syntactically, we try to show that a discourse-oriented approach may yield better insights into the ways the construction functions. The deviant character of utterances such as ?*il vaudrait mieux lui faire téléphoner quelqu'un d'autre varies with the context into which they fit. In explaining utterances of this type, the notion of perceptual strategy proves to be a decisive one.