more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Compositionality is best seen as saying the semantic value of a string is explained by the strings lower down its parsing tree. It is unimportant whether a string is always parsed in terms of its own substrings.
Clarification
The 'parsing tree' is tha analysis of meaning into branching components
Gist of Idea
Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components
Source
Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem')
Book Ref
Potter,Michael: 'The Rise of Anaytic Philosophy 1879-1930' [Routledge 2020], p.41
A Reaction
That is, the analysis must explain the meaning, but the analysis can contain more than the actual ingredients of the sentence (which would be too strict).
Related Idea
Idea 22282 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter]
| 22280 | Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter] |
| 23488 | Propositions are understood via their constituents [Wittgenstein] |
| 23511 | Propositions use old expressions for a new sense [Wittgenstein] |
| 7772 | Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 19133 | If you assign semantics to sentence parts, the sentence fails to compose a whole [Davidson] |
| 12610 | Encountering novel sentences shows conclusively that meaning must be compositional [Peacocke] |
| 18994 | The content of an assertion can be quite different from compositional content [Yablo] |
| 11005 | Negative existentials with compositionality make the whole sentence meaningless [Read] |
| 21655 | Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence [Hofweber] |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| 18000 | Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor] |
| 17999 | Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18014 | Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor] |
| 14695 | Semantic theories show how truth of sentences depends on rules for interpreting and joining their parts [Schroeter] |