Compositionality

History

Discussion of compositionality started to appear at the beginning of the 19th century, during which it was debated whether what was most fundamental in language was compositionality or contextuality, and compositionality was usually preferred. Gottlob Frege never adhered to the principle of compositionality as it is known today (Frege endorsed the context principle instead), and the first to explicitly formulate it was Rudolf Carnap in 1947.