MENTAL STATES, LANGUAGE, AND COMPOSITIONALITY
MADALINA NICOLOFABSTRACT. Barker and Jacobson examine the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Braisby notes that the nature of complex concepts has important implications for the computational modelling of the mind, as well as for the cognitive science of concepts. According to LePore and Fodor, compositionality is the following aspect of a system of representation: the complex symbols in the system inherit their syntactic and semantic properties from the primitive symbols of the system. Prinz maintains that prototypes are very important components of concepts, components that play a privileged role in our mental lives.