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Single Idea 17999

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

Full Idea

In the strong form of the principle of compositionality any meaningful expressions combined in a syntactically well-formed manner compose a meaningful expression.

Gist of Idea

Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful

Source

Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1)

Book Ref

Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.5

A Reaction

[She cites Montague as holding this view] I find this plausible, at least. If you look at whole sentences they can seem meaningless, but if you track the process of composition a collective meaning emerges, despite the oddities.

Related Idea

Idea 18000 Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor]

The 51 ideas from Ofra Magidor

17998 Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor]
17999 Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor]
18000 Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor]
18001 Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor]
17997 Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor]
18008 Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor]
18010 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor]
18011 Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor]
18012 Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor]
18013 Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor]
18015 The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor]
18014 Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor]
18016 Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor]
18017 If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor]
18019 People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor]
18020 Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor]
18018 To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor]
18028 Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor]
18029 Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor]
18027 Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor]
18022 Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor]
18024 One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor]
18023 Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor]
18025 The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor]
18026 Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor]
18021 Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor]
18030 A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor]
18031 If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor]
18032 Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor]
18034 Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor]
18036 A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor]
18035 Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor]
18037 Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor]
18039 If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor]
18040 Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor]
18041 Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor]
18043 The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor]
18042 The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor]
18047 A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor]
18048 A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor]
18049 The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor]
18050 If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor]
18054 Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor]
18053 The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor]
18051 In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor]
18055 In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor]
18056 Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor]
18057 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor]
18058 Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor]
18059 The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor]
18060 We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor]