Abstract

I will talk about a draft of a chapter from Peter’s and my (still to be written) book on compositionality. This chapter presents an algebraic framework for discussing formal compositionality-related issues. The idea is for it to be general enough that most current linguistic accounts of the syntax-semantics interface fit into it, such as Montague Grammar, transformational accounts of syntax, Minimalism, Categorial (type-logical) Grammar, Sign-based grammars, and others. After giving some background from (universal) algebra, I will look at each of these approaches (or as many as there is time for) and see how they can be rendered in the algebraic setting. One ambition is that the average linguist or philosopher interested in formal semantics should be able to see that the way we talk (formally) about compositionality in the book actually concerns what (s)he is doing.