# A Compositional Explanation of the Pet Fish Phenomenon

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.06594 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06594/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 22 Sep 2015.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Composing Conversational Negation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06820/) (2021)
- [A Categorical Semantics of Fuzzy Concepts in Conceptual Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05985/) (2021)
- [Grounded learning for compositional vector semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06808/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The `pet fish' phenomenon is often cited as a paradigm example of the `non-compositionality' of human concept use. We show here how this phenomenon is naturally accommodated within a compositional distributional model of meaning. This model describes the meaning of a composite concept by accounting for interaction between its constituents via their grammatical roles. We give two illustrative examples to show how the qualitative phenomena are exhibited. We go on to apply the model to experimental data, and finally discuss extensions of the formalism.