Page 124 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
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A simple formulation of the principle of com- positionality one often encounters is:
The meaning of a compound expression is a function of the meanings of its parts.
Thus formulated, the principle is immediately appeal- ing and widely accepted. It may well be that much of its attraction derives from the fact that this for- mulation contains certain terms which call for a specific interpretation, such as meanings, parts, and
function.
In theories of natural language that primarily deal with syntax this principle does not play an important role. Moreover, there is much research in the sem- antics of natural language that focuses on the semantic aspects, and where natural language is treated as a source of problems, but where the principle is not part of the descriptive aims (e.g., when designing a model for tense in natural language). The principle is, however, important in theories where meaning is investigated in its relation to syntax. It is, for instance, the fundamental principle of Montague Grammar (see Montague 1970). There the principle of com- positionality of meaning is given a precise interpret- ation, which has led to interesting discussions with practitioners of other theories of grammar. In this article, the important features of this interpretation are discussed and some of the issues raised in the
discussions are mentioned. For a more extensive dis- cussion see Janssen 1997.
1. Theoretical Preliminaries
If one considers natural language, it becomes immedi- ately clear that knowing the meanings of the parts is not sufficient for determining the meaning of the complete sentence. Parts may form several sentences with differences in meaning. An example is Suzy married, thereafter Suzy got a baby versus Suzy got a baby, thereafter Suzy married. One has to know how the parts fit together. The notion 'parts' is, therefore, always interpreted as including the information in which way they are parts. Since the syntactic rules give information on how the expressions are formed, a connection with syntax seems obvious. Several authors make this explicit in their formulation of the principle. One formulation expressing this is:
The meaning of a compound expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and of the syntactic rule by which they are combined.
(Partee, et al. 1990:318)
In this formulation some theoretical assumptions are implicit. The formulation assumes that a dis- tinction is made between two aspects of sentences, i.e., the way in which the expressions are generated in the syntax, and their meanings. The principle is necess- arily at odds with any theory not distinguishing these
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Compositionality of Meaning T. M. V. Janssen