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Compositionality w.r.t. reference, denotation and
meaning IV:
c) m is a concept
ii)
Without any lexical change the sentence Charles wants to marry a princess.
allows for two readings:
a) There is a princess and Charles wants to marry he
b) Charles wants that there were a princess whom he would marry.
So the expression “to want to marry a princess” as if denoted two properties.
Indeed, let Charles have the property according the reading a).
Peter might have the property according to reading b).
A simple substitution of the expression “wants to marry a princess” into both the
statements that claim the possessing of a property by Charles and Peter would
not result in the claim that Peter has the same property as Charles.
Solution: The possible readings a) and b) show that
1. disambiguation is possible,
2. the ambiguous sentence is something like an abbreviation (where semantic
distinctions are lost). There are two meanings (concepts) belonging to the
sentence, each of them is the meaning of one of the two readings. (See
Appendix.)
No problem with compositionality arises after the disambiguation has been realized.
5. 5. 2017
Compositionality
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