What Compositionality Could Not Be
2.2. Creativity and Compositionality
2.2.1. Towards Nonsense
Let’s now recall the standard semanticist claim that semantic theo- ries are taken to be stating the connections in virtue of which certain (systematic) relations among assignments of semantic values to sen-
meanings. Lasersohn (2009) has argued otherwise (unconvincingly). Kempsonet al.(2001: §1.1), Stokhof (2002) and Cannet al.(2005: §1.3) argue for the opposite. Chomsky (2000: 12) himself has de ned e.g. thedisplacement propertyin terms of interpretation; and so a fact about how we interpret sentences (i.e. we treat expressionsas if they were in a different position from the one occupied at surface structure) becomes a fact about competence (as noted in Cook and Newson 2007: 33) andhenceabout linguistic structure itself. Incidentally, as Evans (1976: 51) pointed out, the only theory-neutral way to de ne semantically complex expressions is in terms of speakers’
understanding(non-atomic expressions are those thatrequiregrasp of structure to be understood).
‘Justi ed’ might be a more apt term here. Hodges (1998: 10), Szabó (2000: ch. 3) and Fodor
and Lepore (2001: 45) reject ECE. I nd their claim (and arguments) puzzling.
MDP is the key dogma of semanticism, from Carnap (1942: §7), Chomsky (1965: 75, 136,
162), (1966: 93) and (1972a: 131-134, 178), all the way up to Fodor and Lepore (1991: 333), Cap- pelen and Lepore (2005a: 2) and Stanley (2007). For Janssen (1997: 427) and Stanley (2000: 34) MDP is entailed by PoC (recall the ‘solely’ quali er in its formulation). Collins (2007) reminds us that modern thinking in syntactic theory lends little support to MDP. Syntax bothunder- and
over-determines content (there isn’t enoughstructurein the syntax to pin down semantically ex- pressed propositional content but there is also redundancy created by theCopyoperation). For all that, Chomskyans routinely claim that Universal Grammar is a system for pairing sounds/signs and meanings—see e.g. Chomsky (1970b: 12,14) and (1981: 17), Hinzen (2006: 154, fn. 4), (2006: 111), (2009: 16, 19), Webelhuth (1995: 3), Bošković and Lasnik (2007: 1), Boeckx (2008b: 2).
What Compositionality Could Not Be | tences (and expressions more generally) hold (e.g. entailment, syn- onymy and so forth).
Relatedly, they are also expected to be making predictions as to the truth-conditions of sentences (or the propositions associated with them) and, crucially, as to which meanings will beimpossible(what- everthatmeans).
In other words, semantic theories have got to encase what Katz and Fodor (: ) calledprojection rules from the lexicon to the set of complex expressions.
It is those rules that discipline the semantic behaviour of expres- sions under embedment. It is those rules that impose normative con- straints on usage (to be a rationallanguage user is to abide by those rules). It is (tacit) grasp (or internal representation) of those rules that constitutes our linguistic competence (our competence has ex- actly the same structure as our language). Indeed, it is those rules that make our vernacularlearnable.
And if the semanticist picture of the language machinery is cor- rect, it is those rules that correctly predict the emergence of nonsense when words are combined in certain (presumably illicit) ways.
e semanticist’s commitment to some version of PoC controlling the projection rules and to a PoCU-explanation of CC will therefore entail a corresponding commitment to the preservation by the com- positional operations of a certain range of properties.
Above all, meaningfulness and understanding must be preserved
is view of semantics stems from (at least) Katz and Fodor (1963) and is fairly widely en-
dorsed, e.g. Katz (1981: 207), Soames (1985: 159), Larson and Segal (1995: 3), Szabó (2000: 51). For a recent contrary voice, see Horwich (2010: ch. 8).
See Husserl (1900-01/2001: IV, §10), Katz and Fodor (1963: 175), Chomsky (1965: 3, 157),
Routley (1966: 178), Davidson (1967: 21) and (1984: xiii), Katz (1981: 207), Pustejovsky (1995: 40-41), Webelhuth (1995: 4), Barker and Jacobson (2007: 2-3), Hendrikset al.(2010: 21).
See also Chomsky (1957: 15) and (1965: 154). I’m also targeting the more speci cProjection Principlein e.g. Chomsky (1981: 29), (1982: 4-9) and (1986: 82) that theθ-marking properties of lexical items (i.e. the properties thattypethe thematic roles of lexemes) are “represented categorially at each syntactic level”. In fact the motivation for the principle in his (1981: 31) is virtually the same acquisition-argument given in support of PoC. See also Culicover (1997: 99). e Projection Principle is now no more (see Chomsky 1981: 187-9 and 1995a: 390), its role taken over by the
Mergeoperation (Chomsky 1995a: 396-8). Geeraerts (2010: §3.2) has a good discussion of the history of projection rules within the generative enterprise.
As we shall see, the trouble for the semanticist comes from theneedto discipline the interaction
between lexicon and compositional rules in such a way that nonsense can be predicted in advance (assuming semanticism, the EP for NL hasnosolution, I’ll claim).
As Williamson (2003b: 264, fn. 17) points out, some properties, e.g. pragmatic ones such as
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under composition. And here’s where trouble awaits the semanti- cist, I contend. In order to carry out the explanatory task required by the CC truism, the semanticist needs to show that meaningfulness and understanding are preserved (or provide a systematic explana- tion ofwhy and howthey fail to be so preserved) and, more impor- tantly, that their preservation is ultimately dependent on the (formal) compositional constraints on the semantics (and thus that thecorrect rules—presumably some version of the traditional Tarskian ones ex- tended to deal with some version of possible worlds semantics—are those that preserve the relevant properties).
Speci cally, I shall argue that nonsense poses a problem for this view, because nonsensical sentences are such that themeaningfulness of the components (and our knowledge/understanding of what that meaningfulness consists in) is not preserved by the compositional op- erations.
Nonsense, that is, is a failure ofclosure: the meaningfulness of the components does not add up to a meaningful whole (i.e. evenmin- imal increases in syntactic complexity may engender loss of under- standing).
Conversely, EPoCU implausibly attributessemantic omniscienceto speakers (knowledge of the atoms is taken to guarantee knowledge of anycombination thereof).
In short, contra the obvious reading of CC, the set of meaningful sentences isnotclosed under the (unrestricted) compositional oper- ations.
My main contention, then, is that this puts the semanticist in a dilemma—the rst of four that I raise for her in this chapter—since either she has to radically disconnect epistemic versions of PoC from the version adopted in her theory of meaning (thus severely weak- ening the force of CC as the main motivation for insisting on the
Obviously, it is an interesting question whichlevelof meaningfulness (and of understanding)
needs to be preserved for the truth of CC (and of semanticism). See fn. 157, p. 50, for discussion.
e idea of closure/property preservation is fairly clear in Fodor and Lepore (2002: 1), where
PoC is glossed as the idea that complex expressionsinheritthe syntactico-semantic properties of their constituents. Clearly, closure is another way of saying that the rulesdogenuinely project.
We could also say that NL is not compositionallyconservative(adding novel complex meanings
changes the meaning of the atoms). For just one example of the semanticist commitment to the preservation of meaningfulness/understanding under composition see e.g. Fricker (1982: 64). Note that the problem for EPoCU is highly general and not restricted to nonsense. Replies along the lines of Dowty (2007: 27) or Everaert (2010: 83) would be wide of the mark.
Contra, in particular, Katz and Fodor (1963: 171). e failure of closure may not worry those,
like Chomsky, who do not deem the set to be i) recursively enumerable anyway; ii) of much rele- vance to the formal enterprise. More later.
What Compositionality Could Not Be | compositional constraint) or she is obliged to increase the amount of information contained in the lexicon so that illicit combinations can be correctly predicted (and disquali ed) ahead of use—PoC, that is, must also explain the contrapositive of CC (why speakers do not understand nonsense).
e required increase to every lexeme’s information content will however be such as to make the lexicon itselfunlearnable:
Semanticist Dilemma (SD) I: To de ne the characteristic func- tion for the set of meaningful expressions, the semanticist will either have to ) in ate the lexicon and compositional rules beyond learnability so as to regulate all possible meaning- combinations in advance of use or ) abandon PoCU, and thus lose the main motivation for insisting that a semantics be com- positional.
In an attempt to save compositionality as the only explanation of our linguistic creativityand of the learnability of our languages, the semanticist is forced to in ate the lexicon (and/or the compositional rules) to the point where the learnability constraint is violated.
e semanticist view thus contains a fatal tension between learn- ability and creativity, and the commitment to PoC makes it impos- sible to satisfy both requirements. Accordingly, the allegedly truistic connection between CC and PoC turns out to be an illusion, or so I shall argue.
is should suffice by way of stage-setting.
In the next section I examine the phenomenon of nonsense. In sec- tion and I move on to examine possible exit points for the seman- ticist. I conclude that the supposedly platitudinous status of CC is
For a recent discussion of the inexhaustible variety of contextual sense-modulation and the
difficulties it creates for the lexicon see Wilson and Carston (2007: §2).
As Uriagereka (2008: xvii) notes, it is oen assumed that questions of memory limitations
only affect performance. is is not so; they do signi cantly affect competence too (as Uriagereka eloquently shows).
(1) seems obvious (or will become so during the course of the chapter); the point about (2) is
that the semanticist may choose to go epistemicist and insist that the function delivers a verdict in all cases but that (like e.g. the Ackermann function) it may in general outrunourability to compute its values. If so, CC must be given a different explanation.
On the learnability requirement, see e.g. the classic statement in Davidson (1964: 3, 8). e
requirement persists, see e.g. Stanley (2000: 34), who thinks that admitting violations to PoC due to extra-linguistic context would make language unlearnable.
If my line of reasoning is sustained, we then face the further questions of a) explaining away
the plausibility of the semanticist’s insistence on the compositionality constraint; b) sketching out a role for systematicity and grasp of structure within a non-compositional framework, both tasks for another day, I fear.
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unwarranted and that CC, in and of itself, does not provide support for the insistence that NL semantics respect PoC.
Before all that, there is one more issue I need to deal with. 2.2.2. Why Nonsense?
One might question the choice of nonsense. Why should we (and the semanticist in particular) worry about nonsense? Aren’t nonsen- sical sentences (NS) peripheral, if not outright exotic cases anyway? Aer all, CC can be taken to require that we explain how we under- stand novel sentenceswhen we do understand them—it wasn’t meant to coverallsentences at all. Can’t we therefore simply rule out NS as outlandish cases of no import to the standard processing of well- behaved meanings? Couldn’t we for instance just stipulate that the meaning function is not de ned for NS? I’ll deal with this last strategy in the next section. Let me address the rst point right away instead. I contend that nonsense cases are absolutely central to composi- tionality, that they are in fact the litmus test for the principle. Here’s why.
First, with nonsense there is no interference from the haze of use—there is no noise from distracting use-familiarity to hide the workings of the machinery, that is. Moreover, and for the same rea- son, NS are genuinelynovel cases, and thus precisely the ones at the heart of CC, the ones we are under theoretical obligation to explain.
In contrast, the classic textbook examples that are supposed to pro- vide intuitive support for PoC are at mostunusual, rather than starkly novel, in that they combine familiar words in familiar patterns: the oddity is purely in the startling juxtaposition of perfectly familiar ker- nels that give only a mild rattle to our conceptual scheme—the nov- elty is subdued, the trick these examples pull but a cheap one.
Not so withechtcases of nonsense, cases where meanings do clang together, where categories clash and derivations crash—the failure of
Patrick Greenough has urged me to address this issue.
is remark is indeed oen made, but it is nonetheless curious. As Dummett (1974: 22) points
out, it is precisely disputed cases of applicability that make perspicuous the precise speci cations of the rules that supposedly determine the meaning of an expression (that’s whyZettel§440 is so unsettling, for the very possibility that we couldalwaysconstruct awkward cases obviously threatens the general decidability of our predicates).
To claim that we understand inde nitely many sentences leaves it open that there may be
inde nitely many we don’t understand. I’m being charitable here. Although this option is logically possible, standard statements of CC are clearly not meant to leave this particular loophole open.
See e.g. Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet’s (1990/2000: 6) “I saw a pink whale in the parking
What Compositionality Could Not Be | understanding in such cases is truly catastrophic, not just an oddity to be dismissed away as purely peripheral.
e fact is that it is in the face of authentic novelty, andonlythen, that we can hear the cogs in the compositional machinery being laid bare as they grind to an embarrassing halt (or at least it seems as if they do).
Suddenly, in the face of nonsense, the normally non-overtly infer- ential mechanisms that (supposedly) deliver meanings to us arede- manding additional input from speakers, for they appear impotent to construct a meaning for the troublesome sentence unless supple- mented byadditionalinput from the speaker/hearer.
Ultimately, the idea challenged by nonsense is that there arecanon- icalgrounds for acceptance for sentences and that those grounds are presented to us on a plate by the compositional machinery (that’s what talk of the objectivity of meaning boils down to; that’s, allegedly, the source of whatever normativity meaning has for us).
It seems instead obvious that NS do not have canonical grounds attached to them by the compositional machinery; and if so, I can see no reason why we should think that the machinerydoes succeed in attaching canonical grounds to run-of-the-mill cases either.
And this is indeed why NS also challenge one other key commit- ment behind truth-conditional semantics, namely itsrepresentational stance, its distinctive claim that to know the meaning of a sentence is to know what the world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.
On the semanticist picture, a sentence provides us with a purported representation of reality that we may then compare to the world; our assertoric practices with that particular sentence are thus a func- tion of the particular sentence-world connection determined by its syntactico-semantic structure.
But for us to be able to judge whether or not a sentence is assertible in a context it is necessary that we can make sense of the purported claim made by sentencebeforewe look out to the world.
Nonsense puts pressure on this idea, as we shall see, for we don’t even know what a NS says, and if so, we lack the means for com-
Am I conceding that thereisa compositional machinery? Perhaps. But even imaginary ma-
chines can make imaginary noises.
Chomsky (1965: 76, 149). Similarly, Horwich (1998: 155) states that, given an understanding
of the constituents,no further workis needed to gain understanding of the complex.
See e.g. Heim and Kratzer (1998: 1). roughout, my use of ‘representationalist’ and its cog-
nates is to be taken in Taylor’s (1980) and Brandom’s (2000) sense. A concise critique of represen- tationalism is in Read (2010: 558).
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paring sentence and world—the most basic test, it would seem, for establishingwhether or notone iscompetentin a language.
We see here another facet of UaGS: on that view, grasping the mean- ing of a complex expression is grasping a de nite representational claimabout some portion of reality, which isthenused for truth-value assessment. And the idea is that the structure of that claim is compo- sitionally determined (andsolelyso).
Nonsense challenges this idea, for it is conceded on all hands that NS require further input from speakers (that is indeed the mark of nonsense)—le on their own, as it were, NS provide at mostsub- skeletalcomponents for truth-value assessment.
ere is therefore another, closely related target that needs men- tioning, and it’s the idea, still current in much contemporary seman- tics, that we give the meaning of a sentence by stating its truth con- ditions (the fact that those conditions are worldly is what makes se- manticism a representationalist enterprise).
Given this (more or less straightforward) equation of meaning and truth-conditions, EPU entails our last de nition in this chapter:
UaKTC: To understand a sentence is to know its truth- conditions.
I shall argue that nonsense puts pressure on the claim that under- standing is grasp (indeed, knowledge) of truth conditions (note the connection with UaGS: grasping theformof an expression is grasp- ing itstruth-conditionalcontribution under embedment).
Indeed, a commitment to UaKTC gives rise to the second dilemma for the semanticist, which I shall discuss at greater length later in the chapter:
SD II: Given UaKTC, the semanticist will have to say either that we understand nonsense or that we do not. In the rst case, she will have to weaken the classic conception of truth-conditions, in the second case she will have to reject CC. Neither horn is
On many views, the representational aspect of language is its central semantic fact (Soames
1989: 182). See Chomsky (2000: 132) and (2003: 292) for a contrary view. My own view is fairly close to Chomsky’s (minus his baffling insistence on nativism): the representational structures pro- vided by language are radically minimal (but that’s because mental content is radically minimal too). Representationalism needs not be committed to what Ludlow (2003: 145) and (2011: 134) called theLanguage/World Isomorphism. A much weaker assumption will do just as well.
Chomsky (1965: §4.1).
Again, read this as a conditional (U(S)→KTC(S))—see fn. 5. A more general version would
have it that to understand an expression is to know its truth-conditional contribution under em- bedment. See Carnap (1942: §7) for a classic statement of UaKTC.
What Compositionality Could Not Be | compatible with full-blown semanticism.
And if all this is not enough, nonsense matters for yet another, ab- solutely fundamental reason.
Suppose we think that it is unreasonable to demand that a semantics give an account of the grasp/possession of satisfaction conditions for predicates and atomic sentences more generally. e task of a com- positional semantics, we have been told time and time again (perhaps at least since Stalnaker (: ), perhaps since long before that), is to give an account of the functional relations holding between ex- pressions under embedment.
Nonsense, I shall argue, puts pressure on that more modest claim too. In fact, I think it shows that claim to be either an utterly trivial one or outright empty.
Lastly, nonsense puts pressure on the idea that a theory of meaning could be modest (in the sense made familiar and defended by Mc- Dowell), that it could, that is, be piggy-backed on an antecedent