Dictionary

compositional en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˌkɒm.pəˈzɪ.ʃən.əl/
• kŏm'-pə-zĭʹ-shə-nəl
• (US)
• (General-American) audio
• (UK)

Etymology

From composition + -al.

Meanings

1. Of or relating to composition.
   • The compositional aspects of this work are less than ideal.
2. Being the sum of its parts.
   • A wet súit meaning a suit that is wet is a compositional phrase; a wét suit meaning a garment worn by skin divers is a compound. 1979, Edward S. Klima, Ursula Bellugi, The Signs of Language, page 202:
   • We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed. 2003, Jean Boase-Beier, Ken R. Lodge, The German Language: A Linguistic Introduction, page 153:
   • To cite a textbook example, white house and White House are both written with internal spaces, but the first is argued to be a phrase because it is semantically compositional and has phrase-final stress, while the latter is argued to be a word because it has noncompositional semantics and compound-initial stress. James Myers, Wordhood and Disyllabicity in Chinesehttps://web.archive.org/web/20221006165522/http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngmyers/Myers_Ch3_WordsDisyl_Chapter.pdf
   • Sentence meaning is compositional because, to a large extent, it depends on a combination of the meanings of sentence constituents, which implies the concept of semantic structure. 2004, Sergei Nirenburg, Victor Raskin, Ontological Semantics, page 106:
   • The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional.

Forms

Antonyms

non-compositional

Coordinates

contextual

Deriveds

non-compositionality · precompositional · noncompositional · compositional grammar · thermocompositional · compositionalist · subcompositional · compositionality · compositionalism · compositionally

Translations (3)

pl składowy (linguistics: being the sum of its parts) · pl kompozycyjny (linguistics: being the sum of its parts) · cs kompoziční (linguistics: being the sum of its parts)