# Concatenative vs Compositional

## Christopher Diggins — 2006-05-02 15:57:01

    I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

    "compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

    function composition contrasted with function application. "Concatenation"

    is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?

    [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

## sa@dfa.com — 2006-05-02 16:06:16

    charles peirce (the inventor of pragmatism) renamed his doctrine

    "pragmaticism" after william james started using the original.

    the new term, peirce thought, was "so ugly that no one else would

    be tempted to steal it."

    concatenative@yahoogroups.com wrote on 05/02/2006 11:57:01 AM:

     > I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

    > "compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

    > function composition contrasted with function application.

     "Concatenation"

     > is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?

    >

    >

    > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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    > Yahoo! Groups Links

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## William Tanksley, Jr — 2006-05-02 23:16:24

    Christopher Diggins <cdiggins@...> wrote:

     > I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

    > "compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

    > function composition contrasted with function application. "Concatenation"

    > is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?

     I've been blamed for that choice. I think it makes sense to me in that

    "concatenative" describes an elementary property of the language type

    that describes both the semantics and syntax: the concatenation of any

    two valid programs is another valid program.

    A compositional language wouldn't be concatenative if it used

    parentheses and parsing rules, as with J (J is only partially

    compositional, of course; that wasn't its purpose).

    -Billy