Abstract
The paper argues that the very wide-spread construal of the principle of compositionality of meaning as a kind of ‘natural law’ of semantics based on an empirical generalization is not feasible. It argues that the connection between meaning (and hence language) and compositionality is a conceptual, and hence an analytic issue; in particular that the principle is co-constitutive of the very concept of meaning.
It is needed for the purpose of singling out the level of meanings from the various other levels of semantic accessories of expressions.