Compositionality: The Very Idea

Abstract

Compositionality is often considered a fundamental principle of semantics for natural language. Yet only fairly recently has there been something of a theory of compositionality which allows to prove actual results. Basically, the lack of progress has been due to an improper understanding of what syntactic and semantic structures actually are. Many linguistic theories in one way or another confuse them by importing semantic notions into syntax or-conversely-adding syntactic detail to semantic structures. In this paper I shall outline a theory of semantic and syntactic structures and show how it avoids the problems that beset the previous theories. A particular benefit of this approach is that it allows to show results on sentential structure.

From Logical to Distributional Models

“…Conceptual models englobe variants of higher order type theory [1] and the geometrical vector space models based on quantum logic [14], [15], [13]. They all involve reasoning, an essential ingredient of compositional semantics, [6].…”

“…Conceptual models englobe variants of higher order type theory [1] and the geometrical vector space models based on quantum logic [14], [15], [13]. They all involve reasoning, an essential ingredient of compositional semantics, [6].This paper traces the switch from logical functional models of pregroup grammars to the distributional vector space models of [2] and shows how the predicate logic of functional models changes to the quantum logic of vector space models. It also proposes a way to fill a gap left in [4], namely logic.Pregroup grammars [7] provide the common mathematical background of compact closed categories, which facilitates the passage from the functional logical models to vector space models.…”