Single Idea 21655

[catalogued under 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality]

Full Idea

Compositional semantics assigns semantic values to various expressions in order to generate the truth conditions of the sentences in which they can occur correctly, ...thus leading to the truth-conditions of the sentence.

Gist of Idea

Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence

Source

Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.3)

Book Reference

Hofweber,Thomas: 'Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics' [OUP 2018], p.210


A Reaction

I favour both the compositional and the truth-conditional accounts of semantics, but I am not sure how to fit the pragmatic and contextual ingredient into that picture. You can't leave out psychology.