Michael Stöger
University of Vienna
The principle of compositionality (COMP) is famously attributed to Gottlob Frege. (COMP) tells us that the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and their arrangement. Since Frege specified the meaning of expressions with the distinction between sense and reference, Frege should also be committed to a corresponding specification of (COMP): (COMP-R) tells us that the reference of a sentence is determined by the references of its constituent expressions and their arrangement; (COMP-S) tells us that the sense of a sentence is determined by the senses of its constituent expressions and their arrangement.
Besides its intuitive appeal, (COMP) explains the productivity of language: with finite means, speakers can form an arbitrary number of new sentences and speakers can understand these new sentences. The compositional approach (CA) tells us that we need only determine the meaning of expressions in isolation to determine the meaning of any well composed sentence.
Based on (COMP-R), Frege’s theory predicts that sentences have no reference – i.e., no truth-value – if constituent expressions lack reference. Empty names – i.e., names without reference – give rise to this phenomenon. I argue that (CA) has problems explaining why some sentences lack reference while others intuitively do not, although they consist of the same empty name. Consider ´Vulcan´, an empty name that supposedly refers to the planet between Mercury and the Sun. Since ´Vulcan´ is empty, the sentence ´Vulcan orbits the Sun´ lacks reference. But why is ´Vulcan is hypothesised by Le Verrier´ intuitively true, while (CA) predicts that it lacks reference too?
I argue that this misprediction threatens (CA). My aim is also to see whether proponents of (CA) can invoke Frege’s context principle (CP) and offer a reading of it to reject my objection. (CP) tells us that we should never ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a sentence.
Chair: Horia Lixandru
Time: September 11th, 14:50 – 15:20
Location: SR 1.005
SOPhiA 2026 