Visite de D. Westerstahl (Stockholm Université)

A recent trend in semantics, with roots going back to de Saussure, have grammars generate form and content at the same time: sign-based grammars. Some see this format as merely implementing the basic idea of ('direct') compositionality. In the talk I investigate how notions of compositionality for sign-based grammars relate to compositionality in a classical setting where the grammar generating the syntax is separate from the assignment of meaning. One conclusion is that the two approaches are not mere notational variants of each other; another that the sign-based version, in addition to providing a more natural account of ambiguity and synonymy, is a more friendly habitat for rules that are computable but not strictly compositional.