 Compositionality obviously constrains what meanings might be. But the constraints apply only to the meanings of complex expressions—for all  (C)  tells us the meanings of simple expressions could be tables and chairs. For let the meanings of complex expressions be interpreted logical forms, i.e., phrase structure trees with the meanings of the constituent lexical items assigned to their terminal nodes. In a fairly straightforward sense the meanings of lexical items are then parts of the meanings of complex expressions in which they occur, and so the meanings of complexes are determined from the relevant tables and chairs together with their syntactic mode of composition; for similar remarks see Horwich (1997).