 The argument can be criticized on the ground that considerations of this sort simply cannot establish a universal claim. Suppose someone suggests that the complex expression e is a counterexample to  (C).  The fact that we tend to understand all sorts of complex expressions we never heard before does not mean that we would understand e on the first encounter. But suppose we would. Still, even if in general we tend to understand complex expressions we never heard before in virtue of our knowledge of their structure and the meanings of their simple constituents, we might understand e in some other way. General considerations of productivity cannot rule out isolated exceptions to compositionality. 