Ernie Lepore and Jerry Fodor have published a series of original and controversial essays on issues relating to compositionality in language and mind; they have...

Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its status, however, remains contentious. Here, I reassess the nature and scope of the principle of compositionality (Partee, 1995) from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. First, I review classic arguments for compositionality and conclude that they fail to establish compositionality as a property of human language. Next, I state a new (...) competence argument, acknowledging the fact that any competent user of a language L can assign to most expressions in L at least one meaning which is a functiononlyof the meanings of the expression's parts and of its syntactic structure. I then discuss selected results from cognitive neuroscience, indicating that the human brain possesses the processing capacities presupposed by the competence argument. Finally, I outline a language processing architecture consistent with the neuroscience results, where semantic representations may be generated by a syntax‐driven streamandby an “asyntactic” processing stream, jointly or independently. Compositionality is viewed as a constraint on computation in the former stream only. (shrink)

I argue that analogue mental representations possess a canonical decomposition into privileged constituents from which they compose. I motivate this suggestion, and rebut arguments to the contrary, through reflection on the approximate number system, whose representations are widely expected to have an analogue format. I then argue that arguments for the compositionality and constituent structure of these analogue representations generalize to other analogue mental representations posited in the human mind, such as those in early vision and visual imagery.

First-order logic is obviously compositional. However, given standard syntactic and semantic assumptions, first-order logic does not count as compositional by the standard definition. The standard syntax was handed down by Tarski, but a number of philosophers have suggested that Frege's earlier approach had already provided a way out of this problem with compositionality. Unfortunately, Pickel and Rabern have recently shown that, by itself, this Fregean syntax does not help. However, in this paper, I argue that the Fregean syntax motivates (...) a redefinition of compositionality, and that this combined Fregean package successfully delivers the compositionality of first-order logic. Tarskians can also secure compositionality in a similar way, but only if they adopt a key Fregean idea: bound variables are not semantically significant constituents of the formulas in which they appear. (shrink)

Open Compositionality: Towards a Methodology of Language offers a fresh view into human languages as supermodular, highly interactive cognitive capacities allowing for human unique thought and communication. It is a novel account of semantics as decision-making in tandem with the cognition first methodology.

It is a common view that radical contextualism about linguistic meaning is incompatible with a compositional explanation of linguistic comprehension. Recently, some philosophers of language have proposed theories of 'pragmatic' compositionality challenging this assumption. This paper takes a close look at a prominent proposal of this kind due to François Recanati. The objective is to give a plausible formulation of the view. The major results are threefold. First, a basic distinction that contextualists make between mandatory and optional pragmatic processes (...) needs to be revised. Second, the pragmatic theory can withstand a Davidsonian objection only by rejecting the importance of a distinction between primitive and non-primitive semantic items. Thirdly, however, the theory is now open to a worry about how it should be understood: either the theory consists in a very broad functionalist generalization about communication, which makes it explanatorily inert, or it boils down to a highly particularist view about linguistic meaning. Finally, I argue that Recanati's notion of 'occasion meaning' is problematic and suggest replacing it with the notion of speaker meaning, which is explanatorily more basic. (shrink)

Propositions are (generally taken to be) the semantic values of declarative sentences in context. There is a long history of thinking that an important reason for taking propositions to be structured stems from the fact that the semantic values of such sentences are (typically) compositionally determined. In this paper, I argue that compositionality does not entail, nor provide good evidence for, the claim that propositions are structured. I go on to argue that there is no additional feature of declarative (...) sentences—for example, that they are true or false—that, in conjunction with compositionality, entails or provides good evidence for the claim that the semantic values of those sentences are complex. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatist theory of logic teaches us to take the context of utterances as an indispensable logical notion without which there is no meaning. This is not a spat against compositionality per se , since it is possible to posit extra arguments to the meaning function that composes complex meaning. However, that method would be inappropriate for a realistic notion of the meaning of assertions. To accomplish a realistic notion of meaning (as opposed e.g. to algebraic meaning), (...) Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (RT) may be applied in the spirit of Peirce’s Pragmatic Maxim (PM): the weighing of information depends on (i) the practical consequences of accommodating the chosen piece of information introduced in communication, and (ii) what will ensue in actually using that piece in further cycles of discourse. Peirce’s unpublished papers suggest a relevance-like approach to meaning. Contextual features influenced his logic of Existential Graphs (EG). Arguments are presented pro and con the view in which EGs endorse non-compositionality of meaning. (shrink)

In this article, we evaluate the Compositionality Argument for structured propositions. This argument hinges on two seemingly innocuous and widely accepted premises: the Principle of Semantic Compositionality and Propositionalism (the thesis that sentential semantic values are propositions). We show that the Compositionality Argument presupposes that compositionality involves a form of building, and that this metaphysically robust account of compositionality is subject to counter-example: there are compositional representational systems that this principle cannot accommodate. If this is (...) correct, one of the most important arguments for structured propositions is undermined. (shrink)

This paper propose a method for eliminating hyperconnexivity from Wansing's material connexive logic. It is based on a partial rejection of the principle of compositionality and, as a consequence, on the use of semantic frameworks involving a kind of non-determinism regarding the meaning of implication. The main advantage of the approach used in this paper is that the proposed logical theory does not simply avoid the hyperconnexivity, but is also a sub-logic of the logic whose hyperconnexivity it avoids.

The present paper studies the general implications of theprinciple of compositionality for the organization of grammar.It will be argued that Janssen''s (1986) requirement that syntax andsemantics be similar algebras is too strong, and that the moreliberal requirement that syntax be interpretable into semanticsleads to a formalization that can be motivated and applied more easily,while it avoids the complications that encumber Janssen''s formalization.Moreover, it will be shown that this alternative formalization evenallows one to further complete the formal theory of (...) class='Hi'>compositionality, inthat it is capable of clarifying the role played by translation,model-theoretic interpretation and meaning postulates,of which the latter two aspects received little or no attention inMontague (1970) and Janssen (1986). (shrink)

This paper is about compositionality, belief reports, and related issues. I begin by introducing Putnam’s proposal for understanding compositionality, namely that the sense of a sentence is a function of the sense of its parts and of its logical structure (section 1). Both Church and Sellars think that Putnam’s move is superfluous or unnecessary since there is no relevant puzzle to begin with (section 2). I will urge that Putnam is right in thinking that there is indeed a (...) puzzle with a discussion of translation and belief individuation (section 3). Later Salmon (2001/ 2007) reinforces Church’s position, but I will argue that it is still possible to make my case by clarifying the nature of my proposal, i.e., understanding explanations of action from the third-person point of view (section 4). Now, Fine (2007) agrees with Putnam that there is indeed a puzzle to be solved, but he argues that Putnam’s solution of it is problematic, and that his own semantic relationism is a better view. In response to this, I will recast the notion of compositionality based on a certain conception of belief individuation, namely that the semantic content of a sentence is a function of the semantic contents of its parts and of the structure of intensional discourses (sections 3 and 5). Finally the paper will end with a reconsideration of the recalcitrant Kripke’s puzzle about belief (1979/1988), since it might seem to put some pressure on my account. It turns out that my understanding of this puzzle is again different from Fine’s perspective (section 6). (shrink)

This paper starts from the observation that the standard arguments for compositionality are really arguments for the computability of semantics. Since computability does not entail compositionality, the question of what justifies compositionality recurs. The paper then elaborates on the idea of recursive semantics as corresponding to computable semantics. It is then shown by means of time complexity theory and with the use of term rewriting as systems of semantic computation, that syntactically unrestricted, noncompositional recursive semantics leads to (...) computational explosion (factorial complexity). Hence, with combinatorially unrestricted syntax, semantics with tractable time complexity is compositional. (shrink)

The lack of conceptual analysis within cognitive science results in multiple models of the same phenomena. However, these models incorporate assumptions that contradict basic structural features of the domain they are describing. This is particularly true about the domain of mathematical cognition. In this paper we argue that foundational theoretic aspects of psychological models for language and arithmetic should be clarified before postulating such models. We propose a means to clarify these foundational concepts by analyzing the distinctions between metric and (...) linguistic compositionality, which we use to assess current models of mathematical cognition. Our proposal is consistent with the scientific methodology that determines that careful conceptual analysis should precede theoretical descriptions of data. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper argues against Zoltán Szabó’s claim in “Compositionality as Supervenience” that we ought to understand the principle of compositionality as the idea that in natural language, the meanings of complex expressions strongly supervene on the meanings of their constituents and how the constituents are combined. The argument is that if we understand compositionality Szabó’s way, then compositionality can play no role in explanations of the acquirability of natural languages, because it makes these explanations circular. This, (...) in turn, would undermine the primary motivation for thinking that natural language is compositional, and would thus undermine the importance of the principle in natural language semantics. Thus, even if Szabó’s reading of the principle best accords with theorists’ intuitions about what sorts of languages are compositional—as he claims it does—there is good reason to reject that reading. Finally, the paper defends the claim that we ought to think of the principle as the idea that in natural language, the meanings of complexes weakly supervene on the meanings of their constituents and how they are combined. (shrink)

Perception involves the processing of content or information about the world. In what form is this content represented? I argue that perception is widely compositional. The perceptual system represents many stimulus features (including shape, orientation, and motion) in terms of combinations of other features (such as shape parts, slant and tilt, common and residual motion vectors). But compositionality can take a variety of forms. The ways in which perceptual representations compose are markedly different from the ways in which sentences (...) or thoughts are thought to be composed. I suggest that the thesis that perception is compositional is not itself a concrete hypothesis with specific predictions; rather it affords a productive framework for developing and evaluating specific empirical hypotheses about the form and content of perceptual representations. The question is not just whether perception is compositional, but how. Answering this latter question can provide fundamental insights into perception. (shrink)

This is the first part of a two-part article on semantic compositionality, that is, the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. Here we provide a brief historical background, a formal framework for syntax and semantics, precise definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. Stronger and weaker forms are distinguished, as well as generalized forms that cover extra-linguistic context dependence as well (...) as linguistic context dependence. In the second article, we survey arguments for and arguments against the claim that natural languages are compositional, and consider some problem cases. It will be referred to as Part II. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has claimed to have a solution to the traditional problem of what comes first, thought or language. Compositionality, he says, will give us the answer, for at least one must be compositional, and if only one of them is, that is the one that has underived semantic content. He argues that natural languages are not compositional, and therefore that the content of language is derived from the content of thought. I will argue that the idea that language (...) is not compositional conflicts with his productivity and systematicity arguments for the existence of a language of thought. I will also show that Fodor’s solution to the problem fails, as his main argument is circular. Finally, I suggest that Fodor’s argument against the compositionality of language is not decisive, and that we can still attribute at least some degree of compositionality to language. (shrink)

In the past decade various linguists and philosophers (e.g. Pagin, Pelletier, Recanati, Westerståhl, Lasersohn) have proposed a weakening of the standard interpretation of compositionality for propositional content. Their move is motivated by the desire to accommodate radical forms of context sensitivity within a systematic account of natural languages. In this paper I argue against weakening compositionality in the way proposed by them. I argue that weak compositionality fails to provide some of the expected benefits of compositionality. (...) First, weak compositionality fails to provide systematic meaning-rules which can handle forms of context-sensitivity that are not amenable to explanation in terms of a fixed and limited set of contextual parameters. Secondly, I argue that weak-compositionality fails to play any role in explaining speakers’ ability to calculate the semantic values of complex expressions. I conclude that weak compositionality is not a viable alternative to standard interpretations of compositionality, and that it doesn’t offer an acceptable way to accommodate radical forms of context-sensitivity within a systematic account of natural languages. Given the central role that weak-compositionality plays in recent approaches to natural language (e.g. in truth-conditional pragmatics) this also casts doubt on the viability of these projects. (shrink)

This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of (...) logical form, are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore have produced a series of original and controversial essays on issues relating to compositionality in language and mind; they have now revised them all for publication together in this volume. Compositionality is the following aspect of a system of representation: the complex symbols in the system inherit their syntactic and semantic properties from the primitive symbols of the system. Fodor and Lepore argue that compositionality determines what view we must take of the (...) nature of concepts. Anyone trying to figure out how language and mind work must take account of this challenging work by two leading figures in the field. (shrink)

Compositionality in Plant Fixed Expressions Shelley Ching-yu Hsieh, Chinfa Lien, Sebastian Meier Abstract This paper examines fixed expressions that contain plant names in Mandarin Chinese and German corpora. It aims to reveal the compositionality of the concepts of the vehicle flower by means of frame semantics, and then popular vehicles (plant names) and underlying conceits (the associations between vehicles and meanings) of plant fixed expressions in these two languages will be explored. The linguistic frames of flowers show that (...) German focuses on function by adopting usability and edibility of plants in their expressions, whereas Mandarin Chinese perceives outer appearance of plants and compile “visualized” Chinese expressions. People observe and perceive plants from different standpoints and thus compose different concepts in their minds and languages. Chinese vehicles fall mainly into the categories of trees and flowers, while German vehicles are fruits and divisions of plants such as seeds and roots. This confirms the functional and visual perspective of the respective languages and further suggests the individualism of the Germans as well as the holism of the Mandarin Chinese speakers. (shrink)

A semantic theory is committed to semantic monism just in case every particular semantic property posited by the theory is a member of the same kind. The commitment to semantic monism appears to draw some support from the need to provide a compositional semantics, since taking a single kind of semantic property as key to a semantic theory affords a uniform pattern on the basis of which the meaning of any given sentence can be compositionally determined. This line of support (...) highlights a tension between the principle of compositionality and taking a more pluralistic approach to semantic theorizing. In this essay, that tension is relieved, leaving open the prospect of a pluralistic semantic theory that observes the principle of compositionality. (shrink)

The standard relation of logical consequence allows for non-standard interpretations of logical constants, as was shown early on by Carnap. But then how can we learn the interpretations of logical constants, if not from the rules which govern their use? Answers in the literature have mostly consisted in devising clever rule formats going beyond the familiar what follows from what. A more conservative answer is possible. We may be able to learn the correct interpretations from the standard rules, because the (...) space of possible interpretations is a priori restricted by universal semantic principles. We show that this is indeed the case. The principles are familiar from modern formal semantics: compositionality, supplemented, for quantifiers, with topic-neutrality. (shrink)

Compositionality is the idea that the meanings of complex expressions (or concepts) are constructed from the meanings of the less complex expressions (or concepts) that are their constituents.1 Over the last few years, we have just about convinced ourselves that compositionality is the sovereign test for theories of lexical meaning.2 So hard is this test to pass, we think, that it filters out practically all of the theories of lexical meaning that are current in either philosophy or cognitive (...) science. Among the casualties are, for example, the theory that lexical meanings are statistical structures (like stereotypes); the theory that the meaning of a word is its use; the theory that knowing the meaning of (at least some) words requires having a recognitional capacity for (at least some) of the things that it applies to; and the theory that knowing the meaning of a word requires knowing criteria for applying it. Indeed, we think that only two theories of the lexicon survive the compositionality constraint: viz., the theory that all lexical meanings are primitive and the theory that some lexical meanings are primitive and the rest are definitions. So compositionality does a lot of work in lexical semantics, according to our lights. (shrink)

This is the second part of a two-part article on compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. In the first, Pagin and Westerståhl (2010), we provide a general historical background, a formal framework, definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. It will be referred to as Part I. Here we discuss arguments for and against the claim that natural (...) languages have a compositional semantics. We also discuss some problem cases, including belief reports, quotation, idioms, and ambiguity. (shrink)

I believe that the validity of [the Fregean principle of compositionality] is beyond doubt and thus any grammar, whether organized to reflect [it] directly or not, may ultimately be required to satisfy it. One of the systems that are precisely designed to reflect [it] is Montague Grammar, where, technical details aside, it is realized as follows: (2) a. Sentences are composed by putting their constituents together step by step, with no subsequent rearrangement; b. Not only each lexical item but (...) also each rule of composition is assigned an explicit interpretation; c. Interpretation is given in terms of model theory: the denotation conditions of expressions are defined relative to a mathematical construct which, loosely speaking, models the relevant aspects of the world talked about. (shrink)

The paper analyses what is said and what is presupposed by thePrinciple of Compositionality for semantics, as it is commonly stated. ThePrinciple of Compositionality is an axiom which some semantics satisfy andsome don’t. It says essentially that if two expressions have the same meaning then they make the same contribution to the meanings of expressionscontaining them. This is a sensible axiom only if one combines it with aconverse, that if two expressions make the same contribution to the meanings (...) of sentences containing them, then they have the same meaning;and some assumption that two expressions which can’t meaningfully besubstituted for each other have different meanings. as a full abstraction principle, and as ‘Husserl’s principle’.) Moreoverthe Principle of Compositionality speaks only about when two expressionshave the same meaning; it adds nothing whatever about what that meaningmight be . Some recent discussions by writers in linguistics and logic are assessed. The paper finishes by reviewing thehistory of the notion of compositionality. (shrink)

This paper offers both a theoretical and an experimental perspective on the relationship between connectionist and Classical (symbol-processing) models. Firstly, a serious flaw in Fodor and Pylyshyn’s argument against connectionism is pointed out: if, in fact, a part of their argument is valid, then it establishes a conclusion quite different from that which they intend, a conclusion which is demonstrably false. The source of this flaw is traced to an underestimation of the differences between localist and distributed representation. It has (...) been claimed that distributed representations cannot support systematic operations, or that if they can, then they will be mere implementations of traditional ideas. This paper presents experimental evidence against this conclusion: distributed representations can be used to support direct structure-sensitive operations, in a man- ner quite unlike the Classical approach. Finally, it is argued that even if Fodor and Pylyshyn’s argument that connectionist models of compositionality must be mere implementations were correct, then this would still not be a serious argument against connectionism as a theory of mind. (shrink)

Discussions on the compositionality of inferential roles concentrate on extralogical vocabulary. However, there are nontrivial problems concerning the compositionality of sentences formed by the standard constants of propositional logic. For example, is the inferential role of A $$\wedge$$ B uniquely determined by those of A and B? And how is it determined? This paper investigates such questions. We also show that these issues raise matters of more significance than may prima facie appear.

I argue that compositionality (in the sense of homomorphic interpretation) is compatible with radical and pervasive contextual effects on interpretation. Apparent problems with this claim lose their force if we are careful in distinguishing the question of how a grammar assigns interpretations from the question of how people figure out which interpretations the grammar assigns. I demonstrate, using a simple example, that this latter task must sometimes be done not by computing a derivation defined directly by the grammar, but (...) through the use of pragmatic background knowledge and extragrammatical reasoning, even when the grammar is designed to be fully compositional. The fact that people must sometimes use global pragmatic mechanisms to identify truth conditions therefore tells us nothing about whether the grammar assigns truth conditions compositionally. Compositional interpretation (or the lack thereof) is identifiable not by the mechanisms necessary to calculating truth conditions, but by the structural relation between the interpretation of a phrase in context and the interpretations of its parts in that same context. Even if this relation varies by context, an invariant grammar is possible if grammars can “invoke” pragmatic concepts; but this does not imply that grammatical theory must explain these concepts or incorporate a theory of pragmatics. (shrink)

The thesis that conceptual content is experiential faces a prima facie objection. Phenomenology is not in general compositional. For example, the experienced color of a thing will change depending on its context. If conceptual phenomenology is also subject to context effects, then thought contents will not be compositional. However, the compositionality of thought content is, arguably, explanatorily indispensable. This paper considers several different conceptions of compositionality, but in the end maintains there is no introspective evidence for conceptual context (...) effects. (shrink)

Peter Pagin Is the principle of semantic compositionality compatible with the principle of semantic holism? The question is of interest, since both principles have a lot that speaks for them, and since they do seem to be in conflict. The view that natural languages have compositional structure is almost unavoidable, since linguistic communication by means of new combinations of words would be virtually incomprehensible otherwise. And holism too seems generally plausible, since the meaning of an expression is directly connected (...) with the way that expression interacts with other. (shrink)

There are two principles which bear the name Frege''sprinciple: the principle of compositionality, and the contextprinciple. The aim of this contribution is to investigate whether thisis justified: did Frege accept both principles at the same time, did hehold the one principle but not the other, or did he, at some moment,change his opinion? The conclusion is as follows. There is a developmentin Frege''s position. In the period of Grundlagen he followed to a strict form of contextuality. He repeatedcontextuality in (...) later writings, but became less strict. From 1914 on,pushed by the needs of research, he comes close to compositionality. Buthe could never make the final step toward compositionality forprincipled reasons, therefore he always would reject compositionality. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the principle of compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and its mode of composition. After a brief historical background, a formal algebraic framework for syntax and semantics is presented. In this framework, both syntactic operations and semantic functions are partial. Using 20 the framework, the basic idea of compositionality is given a precise statement, and several variants, both weaker and (...) stronger, as well as related properties, are distinguished. Several arguments for compositionality are discussed, and the standard arguments are found inconclusive. Also, several arguments against compositionality, and for the claim that it is a trivial property, are discussed, 25 and are found to be flawed. Finally, a number of real or apparent problems for compositionality are considered, and some solutions are proposed. (shrink)

The Principle of Semantic Compositionality (sometimes called Frege''s Principle) is the principle that the meaning of a (syntactically complex) whole is a function only of the meanings of its (syntactic) parts together with the manner in which these parts were combined. This principle has been extremely influential throughout the history of formal semantics; it has had a tremendous impact upon modern linguistics ever since Montague Grammars became known; and it has more recently shown up as a guiding principle for (...) a certain direction in cognitive science.Despite the fact that The Principle is vague or underspecified at a number of points — such as what meaning is, what counts as a part, what counts as a syntactic complex, what counts as combination — this has not stopped some people from viewing The Principle as obviously true, true almost by definition. And it has not stopped other people from viewing The Principle as false, almost pernicious in its effect. And some of these latter theorists think that it is an empirically false principle while others think of it as a methodologically wrong-headed way to proceed. (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to Kaplan-style semantics. The formal semantics usually employs the notion of a model, which, besides supplying the sets utterance contexts, circumstances and a domain M 0 of individuals, and also interprets the nonlogical atomic expressions of the language. Standard compositionality applies only to character: Funct makes immediate sense, since character assigns a semantic value directly to expressions. For semantic functions taking contextual arguments, the notion of compositionality must be revised. Notions of contextual (...) class='Hi'>compositionality apply directly to the functional version of the setup that starts with the function char, and defines the other semantics from it. The point of evaluation semantics is indeed basic: if it is compositional, so is the content semantics, and the character semantics. (shrink)

This paper attempts to describe and address a specific puzzle related to compositionality in artificial networks such as Deep Neural Networks and machine learning in general. The puzzle identified here touches on a larger debate in Artificial Intelligence related to epistemic opacity but specifically focuses on computational applications of human level linguistic abilities or properties and a special difficulty with relation to these. Thus, the resulting issue is both general and unique. A partial solution is suggested.

Compositionality Compositionality is a concept in the philosophy of language. A symbolic system is compositional if the meaning of every complex expression E in that system depends on, and depends only on, E’s syntactic structure and the meanings of E’s simple parts. If a language is compositional, then the meaning of a sentence … Continue reading Compositionality →.

Compositionality is a key design feature of human language: the meaning of complex expressions is, for the most part, systematically constructed from the meanings of its parts and their manner of composition. This paper demonstrates that rudimentary forms of compositional communicative behavior can emerge from a variant of reinforcement learning applied to signaling games. This helps explain how compositionality could have emerged gradually: if unsophisticated agents can evolve prevalent dispositions to communicate compositional-like, there is a direct evolutionary benefit (...) for adaptations that exploit the systematicity in form-meaning mappings more rigorously. (shrink)

My approach to the compositionality of meaning is deflationary in two respects. In the first place it shows that there is no need for a Tarski‐style truth‐theoretic account of it, and thereby avoids the difficult methodological and technical problems that would have to be solved on such an account. And in the second place it shows that compositionality imposes no constraint whatsoever on theories of lexical meaning. On the first of these points I am opposing Davidson and the (...) tradition in semantics that he instigated. On the second point I am opposing Fodor and Lepore who have denounced various accounts of lexical meaning (including the one I favour – the use theory) for not squaring with compositionality. My plan for this paper is to outline the deflationary approach, to sketch its advantages, and to defend it against objections that have been made by Davidson, Fodor and Lepore. (shrink)

The principle of semantic compositionality, as Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore have emphasized, imposes constraints on theories of meaning that it is hard to meet with psychological or epistemic accounts. Here, I argue that this general tendency is exemplified in Michael Dummett's account of meaning. On that account, the so-called manifestability requirement has the effect that the speaker who understands a sentence s must be able to tell whether or not s satisfies central semantic conditions. This requirement is not (...) met by truth-conditional accounts of meaning. On Dummett's view, it is met by a proof conditional account: understanding amounts to knowledge of what counts as a proof of a sentence. A speaker is supposed always to be capable of deciding whether or not a given object is a proof of a given sentence she understands. This requirement comes into conflict with compositionality. If meaning is compositionally determined, then all you need for understanding a sentence is what you get from combining your understanding of the parts according to the mode of composition. But that knowledge is not always sufficient for recognizing any proof at all of a given sentence. Dummett's proof-theoretic argument to the contrary is mistaken. (shrink)

Ordinary semantic compositionality (meaning of whole determined from meanings of parts plus composition) can serve to explain how a hearer manages to assign an appropriate meaning to a new sentence. But it does not serve to explain how the speaker manages to find an appropriate sentence for expressing a new thought. For this we would need a principle of inverse compositionality, by which the expression of a complex content is determined by the expressions of it parts and the (...) mode of composition. But this presupposes that contents have constituent structure, and this cannot be taken for granted. However, it can be proved that if a certain principle of substitutivity is valid for a particular language, then the meanings expressed by its sentences can justifiably be treated as structured. In its simplest form, this principle says that if in a complex expression a constituent is replaced by another constituent with a different meaning, the new complex has a meaning different from the original. This principle is again inversely related to the normal compositional principle of substitutivity. The combination of ordinary and inverse compositionality is here called 'strong compositionality'. The proof is carried out in the algebraic framework developed by Wilfrid Hodges and Dag Westerståhl. (shrink)

This paper presents a new solution to the problems for orthodox decision theory posed by the Pasadena game and its relatives. I argue that a key question raised by consideration of these gambles is whether evaluative compositionality (as I term it) is a requirement of rationality: is the value that an ideally rational agent places on a gamble determined by the values that she places on its possible outcomes, together with their mode of composition into the gamble (i.e. the (...) probabilities assigned to them)? The paper first outlines a certain simple response to the Pasadena game and identifies two problems with this response, the second of which is that it leads to a wholesale violation of evaluative compositionality. I then argue that rationality does not require decision makers to factor in outcomes of arbitrarily low probability. A method for making decisions which flows from this basic idea is then developed, and it is shown that this decision method (Truncation) leads to a limited — as opposed to wholesale — violation of evaluative compositionality. The paper then argues that the truncation method yields solutions to the problems posed by the Pasadena game and its relatives that are both attractive in themselves and superior to those yielded by alternative proposals in the literature. (shrink)

Semantic Compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a syntactically complex expression is a function only of the meanings of its syntactic components together with their syntactic mode of combination Various scholars have argued against this Principle in cluding the present author in earlier works One of these arguments was the Argument from Ambiguity which will be of concern in the present article Opposed to the considerations raised against the Principle are certain formal arguments that purport to show (...) that there is no empirical content to the Principle One of these formal ar guments makes use of the notion of free algebras The present article investigates the relationship between these two types of argument.. (shrink)

This paper contains a discussion of how the concept of compositionality is to be extended from context invariant to context dependent meaning, and of how the compositionality of natural language might conflict with context dependence. Several new distinctions are needed, including a distinction between a weaker (e-) and a stronger (ec-) concept of compositionality for context dependent meaning. The relations between the various notions are investigated. A claim by Jerry Fodor that there is a general conflict between (...) context dependence and compositionality is considered. There is in fact a possible conflict betwee ec-compositionality and context dependence, but not of the kind Fodor suggests. It turns on the presence of so-called unarticulated constituents, in John Perry’s sense. Because of this phenomenon, on some semantic accounts there might be a variation in the meaning of a complex expression between contexts without any corresponding variation in any of the syntactic parts of that complex. The conflict can be resolved in several ways. One way is to make the unarticulated context dependence explicit only in the meta-language, which makes it into an unarticulated constituent account. A recent argument by Jason Stanley against such accounts is discussed. According to Stanley, certain readings of English sentences involving binding of contextual variables, are unavailable in these theories. After considering a reply to Stanley by François Recanati, I present an outline of a fully compositional theory, of the unarticulated constituent variety, which does deliver these readings. Concluding remarks on, inter alia, the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

Representational systems such as language, mind and perhaps even the brain exhibit a structure that is often assumed to be compositional. That is, the semantic value of a complex representation is determined by the semantic value of their parts and the way they are put together. Dating back to the late 19th century, the principle of compositionality has regained wide attention recently. Since the principle has been dealt with very differently across disciplines, the aim of the two volumes is (...) to bring together the diverging approaches. They assemble a collection of original papers that cover the topic of compositionality from virtually all perspectives of interest in the contemporary debate. The well-chosen international list of authors includes psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, linguists, and philosophers. (shrink)

The paper identifies some background assumptions of compositionality in formal semantics and investigates how they shape formal semantics as a scientific discipline.

Compositionality is a principle used in logic, philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, and computer science for assigning meanings to language expressions in a systematic manner following syntactic construction, thereby allowing for a perspicuous algebraic view of the syntax-semantics interface. Yet the status of the principle remains under debate, with positions ranging from compositionality always being achievable to its having genuine empirical content. This paper attempts to sort out some major issues in all this from a logical perspective. First, we stress (...) the fundamental harmony between Compositionality and its apparent antipode of Contextuality that locates meaning in interaction with other linguistic expressions and in other settings than the actual one. Next, we discuss basic further desiderata in designing and adjudicating a compositional semantics for a given language in harmony with relevant contextual syntactic and semantic cues. In particular, in a series of concrete examples in the realm of logic, we point out the dangers of over-interpreting compositional solutions, the ubiquitous entanglement of assigning meanings and the key task of explaining given target inferences, and the dynamics of new language design, illustrating how even established compositional semantics can be rethought in a fruitful manner. Finally, we discuss some fresh perspectives from the realm of game semantics for natural and formal languages, the general setting for Samson Abramsky’s influential work on programming languages and process logics. We highlight outside-in coalgebraic perspectives on meanings as finite or infinitely unfolding behavior that might challenge and enrich current discussions of compositionality. (shrink)