Grice was not a compositionalist

--- Grafitto found in toilet.

From

http://ozsl.uu.nl/articles/Janssen02.pdf

"Also in modern semantic theories the two principles are reconciled. Words
do have a meaning in isolation, but which meaning that is, is determined
by the role a word plays in sentences."

The issues here are pretty complex. I dedicated part of ch. iii of my PhD dissertation on this. I wanted to use a variable for a sentence connective (and/or/if -- the only three Grice uses) and come up with meaning-specifications of the type:

'and' means ...
'or' means ...
'if' means ...

-- The whole point of the Gricean manoeuvre. Grice himself found it perhaps too obvious to give it an explicit formulation, but it's there alright.

Janssen continues:

"Let us consider as an example the determiner "every""

Grice does consider "all" meaning "(x)" -- but he knew that quantifiers do not really amount to the purity that truth-functional operators have.

Janseen:

"When considered in isolation, "every" may be assumed to have as meaning the universal quantifier "(Ax)". Motivated by its contribution to sentence meanings, it gets as meaning the generalized quantifier
"(x)Fx -> Gx"" (or (x) Ax --> Bx as I prefer, with alpha and beta alla Grice.

Janseen continues:

"Another example is the subjunctive connective "whether." Asking someone what this word means, makes no sense.""

Grice makes a point here about

"the meaning of 'to'"

but he is joking. He is considered "the meaning of 'or'". Such a short word, should it have a meaning.

He obviously allows for things like

"What U meant by 'or' is the inclusive, not the exclusive disjunctor". So he certainly allowed for 'or' having a meaning.

In unpublished stuff he goes on to say that the SPATIAL sense of things like 'to' or 'in', or 'between' is basic.

Jones is between Nowell and Smith.

is NOT ambiguous: 'between' has only ONE sense. It does not matter if we are judging Jones's position in physical terms, "or in some other order of merit", Grice has it.

Janssen goes on:

"for no one will have an opinion about it. But about the sentence

"John knows whether Mary comes"

one has intuitions: e.g. in case Mary does not come, the sentence
expresses that John knows that Mary does not come. Based upon
sentence meanings the connective can get a meaning."

Or not.

Etc.