This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of Frege, indisputably the father of ...

We prove a theorem stating that any semantics can be encoded as a compositional semanties, which means that, essentially, the standard definition of compositionality is formally vacuous. We then show that when compositional semantics is required to be systematic (that is, the meaning function cannot be arbitrary, but must belong to some class), it is possible to distinguish between compositional and noncompositional semantics. As a result, we believe that the paper clarifies the concept of compositionality and opens the possibility of (...) making systematic formal comparisons of different systems of grammar. (shrink)

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and other (...) sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Peter Pagin Is the principle of semantic compositionality compatible with the principle of semantic holism? The question is of interest, since both principles have a lot that speaks for them, and since they do seem to be in conflict. The view that natural languages have compositional structure is almost unavoidable, since linguistic communication by means of new combinations of words would be virtually incomprehensible otherwise. And holism too seems generally plausible, since the meaning of an expression is directly connected with (...) the way that expression interacts with other. (shrink)

We describe a logic which is the same as first-order logic except that it allows control over the information that passes down from formulas to subformulas. For example the logic is adequate to express branching quantifiers. We describe a compositional semantics for this logic; in particular this gives a compositional meaning to formulas of the 'information-friendly' language of Hintikka and Sandu. For first-order formulas the semantics reduces to Tarski's semantics for first-order logic. We prove that two formulas have the same (...) interpretation in all structures if and only if replacing an occurrence of one by an occurrence of the other in a sentence never alters the truth-value of the sentence in any structure. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the formulation and investigation of a dynamic semantic interpretation of the language of first-order predicate logic. The resulting system, which will be referred to as ‘dynamic predicate logic’, is intended as a first step towards a compositional, non-representational theory of discourse semantics. In the last decade, various theories of discourse semantics have emerged within the paradigm of model-theoretic semantics. A common feature of these theories is a tendency to do away with the principle of compositionality, (...) a principle which, implicitly or explicitly, has dominated semantics since the days of Frege. Therefore the question naturally arises whether non-compositionality is in any way a necessary feature of discourse semantics. Since we subscribe to the interpretation of compositionality as constituting primarily a methodological principle, we consider this to be a methodological rather than an empirical question. As a consequence, the emphasis in the present paper lies on developing an alternative compositional semantics of discourse, which is empirically equivalent to its non-compositional brethren, but which differs from them in a principled methodological way. Hence, no attempts are made to improve on existing theories empirically. Nevertheless, as we indicate in section 5, the development of a compositional alternative may in the end have empirical consequences, too. First of all, it can be argued that the dynamic view on interpretation developed in this paper suggests natural and relatively easy to formulate extensions which enable one to deal with a wider range of phenomena than can be dealt with in existing theories. Moreover, the various approaches to the model-theoretic semantics of discourse that have been developed during the last decade, have constituted a ‘fresh start’ in the sense that much of what had been accomplished before was ignored, at least for a start. Of course, this is a justified strategy if one feels one is trying to develop a radically different approach to recalcitrant problems. However, there comes a time when such new approaches have to be compared with the older one, and when an assessment of the pros and cons of each has to be made. One of the main problems in semantics today, we feel, is that a semantic theory such as Montague grammar, and an approach like Kamp’s discourse representation theory, are hard to compare, let alone that it is possible to unify their insights and results.. (shrink)

The paper analyses what is said and what is presupposed by thePrinciple of Compositionality for semantics, as it is commonly stated. ThePrinciple of Compositionality is an axiom which some semantics satisfy andsome don’t. It says essentially that if two expressions have the same meaning then they make the same contribution to the meanings of expressionscontaining them. This is a sensible axiom only if one combines it with aconverse, that if two expressions make the same contribution to the meanings of sentences (...) containing them, then they have the same meaning;and some assumption that two expressions which can’t meaningfully besubstituted for each other have different meanings. as a full abstraction principle, and as ‘Husserl’s principle’.) Moreoverthe Principle of Compositionality speaks only about when two expressionshave the same meaning; it adds nothing whatever about what that meaningmight be . Some recent discussions by writers in linguistics and logic are assessed. The paper finishes by reviewing thehistory of the notion of compositionality. (shrink)