Talk by Theo M.V. Janssen
Compositionality
The principle of compositionality of meaning is a principle that has
raised many emotions. At the occasion of this 10th Amsterdam colloquium
I intend to give an overview of recent arguments
(from Pelletier and Higginbotham) and some older ones (of Hintikka)
against compositionality and to discuss them. Furthermore the formal
results (of Janssen and of Zadrozny) concerning the power of compositionality will be
compared. The conclusions will be
- there are some general methods to obtain compositional solutions
for difficult problems
- the two formal result are complementary, and show both that compositionality is not a
restriction of possibilities, but a principle of methodology.
- seeking a compositional
solution means providing answers to fundamental questions concerning syntax and semantics.
Paul Dekker, November 2, 1995