Cases of referential shift?

Case 1.  In the sentence ‘It is necessary that Cicero is Tully’, ‘Cicero is Tully’ denotes not the True but rather its intension (i.e. a function from indices to truth-values), the role of the functor ‘It is necessary that’ is two-fold. It both denotes a function and induces a linguistic context in which the embedded term denotes something other than what it would otherwise denote: namely the intension of that term. Hence, ‘It is necessary that’ denotes the necessity function, nec, and induces an intensional context such that ‘Cicero is Tully’ denotes its intension, which nec takes as argument.

Case 2.  In the expression ‘(3)^2 ’, ‘3’ denotes not 3 but rather 9, the role of the functor ‘( )^2’ is two-fold.  It both denotes a function and induces a linguistic context in which the embedded term denotes something other than what it would otherwise denote: namely the square of the denotation of that term. Hence, ‘( )^2’ denotes the identity function, id, and induces a "squared context" such that ‘3’ denotes the square of its customary denotation, which id takes as argument.

* This is adapted from Humberstone, Lloyd (2008), “Can every modifier be treated as a sentence modifier?”, Philosophical Perspectives 22.  I have changed it a bit to make the analogy tighter.