Word
compositionality
Definition
n. the principle that the meaning of a whole sentence or thought is built directly from the meanings of its individual parts.
n. the semantic principle (Frege's principle) stating that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent parts and its syntactic rules.
Examples
“Language relies on compositionality so that combining the words red and apple immediately creates a clear mental picture.”
“Testing whether visual AI exhibits true compositionality involves asking it to render a blue cube inside a red pyramid.”
“Neural networks often rely on superficial statistical associations rather than systematic compositionality, causing brittle failures on novel compound commands.”
Examples
simple
“Language relies on compositionality so that combining the words red and apple immediately creates a clear mental picture.”
contextual
“Testing whether visual AI exhibits true compositionality involves asking it to render a blue cube inside a red pyramid.”
complex
“Neural networks often rely on superficial statistical associations rather than systematic compositionality, causing brittle failures on novel compound commands.”
Real-World Examples
“Compositionality — the ability to correctly pro cess wholes given the ability to correctly process their parts — is a core property of language (Mon tague, 1973; Fodor and Pylyshyn, 1988), enabling unbounded expressivity through the “infinite use of finite means” (von Humboldt 1836, as quoted by Chomsky 1965).” “A frequently men tioned concept in such critiques is compositionality: the ability to build up the meaning of a complex expression by combining the meanings of its parts (e.g. Partee, 1984).” Etymology
From Latin compositio ('a putting together'), from componere ('to put together'). Formulated as a cornerstone of formal semantics by German philosopher Gottlob Frege in the late 19th century.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Domains
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/compositionality