According to Frege's principle the denotation of a sentence coincides with its truth-value. The principle is investigated within the context of abstract algebraic logic, and it is shown that taken together with the deduction theorem it characterizes intuitionistic logic in a certain strong sense.A 2nd-order matrix is an algebra together with an algebraic closed set system on its universe. A deductive system is a second-order matrix over the formula algebra of some fixed but arbitrary language. A second-order matrix A is (...) Fregean if, for any subset X of A, the set of all pairs a,b such that X{a} and X{b} have the same closure is a congruence relation on A. Hence a deductive system is Fregean if interderivability is compositional. The logics intermediate between the classical and intuitionistic propositional calculi are the paradigms for Fregean logics. Normal modal logics are non-Fregean while quasi-normal modal logics are generally Fregean.The main results of the paper: Fregean deductive systems that either have the deduction theorem, or are protoalgebraic and have conjunction, are completely characterized. They are essentially the intermediate logics, possibly with additional connectives. All the full matrix models of a protoalgebraic Fregean deductive system are Fregean, and, conversely, the deductive system determined by any class of Fregean second-order matrices is Fregean. The latter result is used to construct an example of a protoalgebraic Fregean deductive system that is not strongly algebraizable. (shrink)