Compositional Meaning in Logic

The Fregean-inspired Principle of Compositionality of Meaning (PoC) for formal languages asserts that the meaning of a compound expression is analysable in terms of the meaning of its constituents, taking into account the mode in which these constituents are combined so as to form the compound expression. From a logical point of view, this amounts to prescribing a constraint—that may or may not be respected—on the internal mechanisms that build and give meaning to a given formal system. Within the domain of formal semantics and of the structure of logical derivations, the PoC is often directly reflected by metaproperties such as truth-functionality and analyticity, characteristic of computationally well-behaved logical systems.