Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Natural Language and its Speakers: Davidson’s Compositionality
Requirement
Isaac Nevo, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
1. Compositionality
In ‘Truth and Meaning’ (Davidson 1984[1967]) Davidson
spells out various conditions of adequacy for (empirical)
theories of meaning. 1 One such condition – the basis of
much else that goes on in Davidson’s philosophy of
language – is the requirement of compositionality. Since
(natural) languages are infinitely productive, so the
argument goes, and a potential infinity of meaningful
sentences could be generated by each of them, an
adequate theory of meaning for any particular language
must ‘give an account of how the meanings of sentences
depend upon the meanings of words’ (1984: p. 18). Unless
such an account could be given, Davidson goes on to
argue, there could be no explanation of the fact that
languages can be learnt (as first languages) by speakers
possessed merely of finite means. As Davidson puts it:
there would be ‘no explaining the fact that, on mastering a
finite vocabulary and a finitely stated set of rules, we are
prepared to produce and to understand any of a potential
infinitude of sentences’ (1984: p. 18). Since the feature of
compositionality actually characterizes the generation of
truth conditions (under a suitable formalization of the
sentences in question), Davidson suggests that the theory
of meaning should be identified with what was previously
called the theory of reference, namely, a Tarski-style
theory of truth. The Fregean conception of meanings as
truth conditions is thus vindicated by the possibility of
supplying such a theory for the whole of language, and by
the fact that the theory accounts for the compositionality of
meaning so construed.
The purpose of this paper is to point out that
Davidson’s compositionality requirement, as stated above,
is ambiguous. There are two possible readings of the
principle that are not equivalent, depending on how the
order of the quantifiers is to be interpreted within it, and
these different readings suggest very different ‘pictures’ of
the relation between speakers and their languages, and
very different accounts of what a theory of meaning is and
what it has to contribute to the theory of inter-personal
understanding. The ambiguity, so I wish to argue, affects
much of Davidson’s work in the philosophy of language,
and renders many of Davidson’s subsequent arguments
equivocal or otherwise invalid. In particular, Davidson’s
conclusions with respect to the finite resources of
language, the sufficiency of radical interpretability of (all)
meaningful speech, the obscurity of ‘alternative conceptual
schemes,’ the redundancy of reference, the place of
conventions in language, and the possibility of shared
languages, should all be questioned in these terms. All
these theses depend, in one way or another, on
assumptions regarding the compositionality of language. 2
1 Presently, Davidson’s papers are collected in five volumes of collected
papers. In these volumes, each paper is presented with its original date of
publication. In what follows, using the “author-date” system of reference, I shall
make reference to these papers by means of two dates. In square brackets I
shall indicate the date of the paper’s original publication (as specified in the
collected volume). In regular parentheses I shall indicate the collected
volume’s date of publication. Uncollected papers will be indicated by a single
date. Page references, however, will be given to the collected volumes.
2 For these various arguments see: ‘Theories of meaning and Learnable
Languages’ (1984[1965]), ‘Radical Interpretation’ (1984[1973]), ‘On the Very
Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ (1984[1974]), ‘Reality Without Reference’
(1984[1977]), ‘communication and convention’ (1984[1982]), ‘A Nice
The principle of compositionality states that the
meaning of every sentence - each of a potential infinity - is
to be composed of, or derived from, the meanings of a
finite stock of primitive semantic items (words) according to
finitely stated rules. A language that does not satisfy this
principle, e.g., a language with infinitely many semantic
‘primitives,’ is not a finitely learnable language. However,
the principle could be read in either of the following two
ways:
The Weak Compositionality Principle (WCP): For
every sentence of a language (each of a potential infinity)
there is a finite basis (primitive vocabulary + rules) from
which the meaning of that sentence is to be composed (or
can be derived).
The Strong Compositionality Principle (SCP): There
is a finite basis (primitive vocabulary + rules) from which
the meaning of every sentence of a language (each of a
potential infinity) is to be composed (or can be derived).
The ambiguity, in short, is one of scope. In multiply
general statements (such as Davidson’s statement (quoted
above) concerning the semantic dependence of sentences
on words) it makes a difference how the quantifiers are
ordered. In the weak version of the compositionality
principle (WCP) the universal quantification regarding
sentences governs the existential quantification regarding
the finite basis; in the strong version (SCP) the order of
these quantifiers is reversed. Clearly the two versions are
not equivalent. The weak version (WCP) says that the
meaning of every sentence of the language can be derived
from some finite basis or other. It does not require that the
entirety of language should be conceived of as a formal
semantic unity. By contrast the strong version (SCP) states
that there is a finite basis – a single one – from which the
meanings of all sentences are derivable. 3 Language in its
entirety is thus taken to be governed by a single formal
semantic theory.
It might be thought that this distinction is pointless.
The strong version of the principle is the one needed for
any account of a finitely learnable language, while the
weak version renders language-as-a-whole noncompositional,
as this requirement is usually conceived,
and, consequently, not finitely learnable. However, the
point of the distinction is that being thus non-compositional
and not finitely learnable (as a whole) are not such
desperate conditions for natural languages to be in, since
languages that are not strongly compositional as wholes
Derangement of Epitaphs’ (2005[1986]), and “The Second Person” (2001[
1992]).
3 The ambiguity appears not only in Davidson’s work. Consider, for example,
the following from Fodor and Lepore (2002): ‘It appears not to be seriously in
doubt that the compositionality of mental and linguistic representation
underlies both their productivity and their systematicity. Mental and linguistic
representations are constituted by a finite number of recurring primitive parts
[WCP, so far], the arrangements of which determines the structure and
content of all the complex representations [SCP, by now].’ (Bracketed
comments added). Notice that the earlier part of the second of these
sentences commits us to the finite constitution of each complex
representation, which is, indeed, highly plausible. The second part of that
sentence already commits us to a finite basis from which all complex
expressions are to be derived, which is a much stronger statement. See Jerry
A. Fodor and Ernest Lepore, The compositionality Papers (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 2002): p. 2.
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