Elucidating the neural bases of semantic composition is perhaps one of the hardest tasks in the cognitive neuroscience of language. This is because most manipulations of semantic composition are confounded with a contrast in syntax. In this talk I discuss a research program on the neural bases of semantics that takes as its starting point cases of type mismatch for which diagnostics of covert syntax systematically fail. An initial set of results suggests that a region in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, commonly implicated for social cognition and theory of mind, is sensitive to syntax- semantics mismatch in a variety of environments.