Adjective

(en adjective)

Of or pertaining to composition.

The compositional aspects of this work are less than ideal.

(linguistics) Being the sum of its parts.

The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional .

* {{quote-book, year=1979, title=The Signs of Language, author=Edward S. Klima & Ursula Bellugi, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=WeBOn6N8PJ8C&pg=PA202, page=202

, passage=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.}}

* {{quote-book, year=2003, title=The German Language: A Linguistic Introduction, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=-snifythVR4C&pg=PA153, page=153, author=Jean Boase-Beier & Ken R. Lodge

, passage=We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed.}}

* {{quote-book, year=2004, title=Ontological Semantics, author=Sergei Nirenburg & Victor Raskin, page=106, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=OPek3LpMIigC&pg=PA106

, passage=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.}}