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Single Idea 22283

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

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]


The 17 ideas from 'The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930'

Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter]
Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter]
A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter]
Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter]
'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter]
'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter]
Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter]
Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter]
If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter]
The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter]
Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter]
Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter]
Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter]
The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter]
The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter]
It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter]
Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter]