Learnability and Compositionality

Abstract

Abstract: In recent articles Fodor and Lepore have argued that not only do considerations of learnability dictate that meaning must be compositional in the well-known sense that the meanings of all sentences are determined by the meanings of a finite number of primitive expressions and a finite number of operations on them, but also that meaning must be ‘reverse compositional’ as well, in the sense that the meanings of the primitive expressions of which a complex expression is composed must be determined by the meaning of that complex expression plus the manner of its composition. I argue against the requirement of reverse compositionality and against the claim that learnability requires it. I consider some objections and close the paper by arguing against the related claim that concepts are reverse compositional.

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