 The simplest argument for compositionality is that it is supported by intuitions many claim to have about meaning and structure. Although there are interesting putative counterexamples (see  section 4.2)  they probably can be explained away through modest revisions of our syntactic and/or semantic theories. This defense is reasonable but much too modest. For even if it succeeds in convincing some who aren’t already convinced, it leaves us all in the dark why compositionality is true. Defenders of compositionality should do better than this.