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Formal Features of Compositionality

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Abstract

We consider two formalisations of the notion of a compositionalsemantics for a language, and find some equivalent statements in termsof substitutions. We prove a theorem stating necessary and sufficientconditions for the existence of a “canonical” compositional semanticsextending a given partial semantics, after discussing what features onewould want such an extension to have. The theorem involves someassumptions about semantical categories in the spirit of Husserl andTarski.

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Hodges, W. Formal Features of Compositionality. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10, 7–28 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026502210492

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