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Cooperation and Implicature - Coggle Diagram
Cooperation and Implicature
Conversational Implicature
Two Classical and Neo-Grucean Dichotomies
Conversational implicature
o
vs
conversational implicature
f
Conv. Implicatures
o
Strictly observing the maxims of conversation
The soup is warm
+> The soup is not hot
Conv. Implicatures
f
Speaker's ostentatiously flouting the maxims
The British Foreign Office is in Washington
+> The UK follows America's foreign policies too closely.
Generalized conversational implicature (GCI)
vs
particularized
conversational implicature (PCI)
GCI
"Some" x are Y
+> Not many/most/all of the faculty left before the lecture ended
Not many/most/all = x
Don't need any particular context
PCI
+> The lecture didn't go well
Depends crucially on context
John: How did yesterday's guest lecture go? Mary: Some of the faculty left before it ended
Two Neo-Gricean Typologies of Conversational Implicature
Horn: Q-and R-implicatures
The Q-principle (addressee/hearer-based)
&
The R-principle (speaker-based)
Q-implicature:
The soup is warm
+> The soup is not hot
R-implicatures:
Sam broken a leg yesterday.
+> The leg is his own
Levinson: Q-, I-, and M-Implicatures
Q[uantitty] Principle (simplified)
Speaker: Do not say less than is required (bearing the I-principle in mind)
Addressee: What is not said is not the case
Q-Implicatures
Q-scalar implicatures
Q-casual implicatures
Q-alternate implicatures
lexical expressions in a set are informationally ranked
Example:
<succeed, try>
John tried to give up smoking.
+> John did not succeed in giving up smoking.
lexical expressions in the set are of equal semantic strength
Example:
<French, German, Spanish>
We teach French, German, and Spanish here.
+> We don't teach Russian here.
I[nformativeness] Principle
Speaker: Do not say more than is required (bearing the Q-principle in mind).
Addressee: What is generally said is stereotypically and specifically exemplified.
I-Implicatures
conjunction buttressing example:
John pressed the button and the bell rang (p and q)
+> John pressed the button and the bell rang
(temporal sequence, because p and then q)
+> John pressed the button and thereby caused the bell ring.
(causal connectedness, because p therefore q).
+> John pressed the button in order to make the bell ring
(teleology, intentionally, because p in order to cause q).
M[anner] Principle
Speaker: Do not use a marked expression without reason. Addressee: What is said in a marked way conveys a marked message.
M-Implicatures
For example:
John caused the car stop
+> John stopped the car in an unusual manner, e.g. by deliberately bumping into a wall.
Some Current Debates on GCI, In particular Q-scalar Implicature
Epistemic Strength of Q-scalar Implicature
Concerned with
the question of what it is a speaker Q-scalar implicates against.
Two neo-Gricean pragmatic positions
The Weak Epistemic
The Strong Epistemic
Q-scalar Implicature: Default, Contextual, or Grammatical
The Default Inference Theory (Defaultism)
Generated by default
Weak Defaultism
Gazdar (1979) and Horn (1989)
Strong Defaultism
Levinson (2000) and Chierchia (2004, 2006, 2013)
Theory of Presumptive Meaning
Levinson (2000)
(Through a theory of three levels of meaning)
TRADITIONAL
A Level of Sentence-Type Meaning
TRADITIONAL
A Level of Utterance-Token Meaning
NEW
Utterance-Type Meaning
A set of three default inferential heuristics = Q-, I-, and M-principles
Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory of Conversational Implicature
A theory of presumptive meaning (pragmatic) inference that is generalized, default.
Experimental evidence in support of the default inference theory and the structural inference view.
Pointed out by Hirschberg (1991)
Gazdar’s generalization prevents too many Q-scalar implicatures.
Hirschberg’s own view is that Q-scalar implicatures are barred only under overt negation.
2006
Horn argued, that Q-scalar implicatures arising from negative Horn scales are not less robust than those which are derived from their positive counterparts
1979
Gazdar claimed that Q-scalar implicatures are suspended by logical operators (and) in embedded contexts
Levinson (2000) & Horn (2006)
The alleged blockage of Q-scalar implicatures is due to the fact that a positive Horn scale is reversed under negation and other downward-entailing operators, and consequently a different Q-scalar implicature is derived from the inverse scale.
Negative Horn Scales
<not some, not many, not all>
Not all stores were crowded with shoppers
+> most/many/some stores were crowded with shoppers
DIs
Recanati’s terminology
The Structural Inference Theory
Endorse Levinson’s default analysis of Q-scalar implicatures and argue that Q-scalar implicatures be computed compositionally
:red_cross:
The Gricean Root'
Landman
The orthodox Gricean doctrine that the derivation of conversational implicatures is deferred to the output of grammar at the utterance level
The derivation of GCIs, in particular Q-scalar implicatures, relies heavily on structural factors
Recent years
(i) Whether or not pragmatically enriched or inferred content can ‘intrude’ upon or enter the conventional, truth-conditional content of what is said.
(ii) If the answer to (i) is positive, then what the pragmatic intrusion under consideration is?
The contextual inference theory
Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995
Conversational implicatures are essentially inferred contextually on a case-by-case basis
Cardinals: Scalar Expressions Generating Q-scalar Implicatures?
Lexically or logically ambiguous.
Runs directly against the spirit of
Occam’s razor
All things being equal
Neo-Gricean Pragmatics (Alternative Analysis)
Ordinary Expressions
(Warm)
Cardinals
(Nine)
Cardinals be treated as semantically underspecified
:red_cross: by Levinson
Cardinals continue to be treated on a par with other scalar expressions so that the original neo-Gricean analysis can be retained (Levinson, 2000)
Logical Operators (
Some
)
Highly controversial.
Example:
Some stores were crowded with shoppers
a. At least some stores were crowded with shoppers.
b.Some but not many/most/all stores were crowded with shoppers
Embedded Implicature
Properties of Conversational Implicature
Properties
Defeasibility or cancellability
Conversational implicatures can
vanish in certain linguistic or non-linguistic contexts
How?
if they are inconsistent with
Semantic entailments
Background assumptions/real world knowledge
Contexts
Priority conversational implicatures
Non-detachability
Any linguistic expression with the same semantic content tends to carry the same conversational implicature
Calculability
Conversational implicatures can transparently be derived via the cooperative principle and its component maxims
Non-conventionality
Dependent on the saying of what's coded, conv. implicatures are non-coded in nature
Reinforceability
Conv. implicatures can be made explicit without producing too much of a sense of redundancy
Universality
Tend to be universal, since they are motivated rather than arbitrary
Indeterminacy
Open-ended range of conv. implicatures relating to matters in hand
Pragmatic Intrusion into What is Said: Explicature, the Pragmatically Enriched Said, Impliciture, or Conversational Implicature?
Pragmatics Intrusion and Pragmaticists
What the pragmatic intrusion under consideration is.
The main empirical evidence for pragmatic intrusion.
Grice (1989a: 25)
(i) reference to identify,
(ii) deixis to fix
(iii) ambiguity to resolve
Levinson (2000: 172–186)
(iv) ellipsis to unpack
(v) generalities to narrow
Unarticulated constituents (UCs)
Propositional or conceptual elements of a sentence that is not explicitly expressed linguistically.
Classical Gricean
They are the three sentences without brackets. On the other hand, the sentences with brackets contain the possible, pragmatically enriched propositional or conceptual material for the UCs.
(26) It is snowing [in Beijing].
(27) Some people are a bit surprised when they found out if I’ve got a [good] brain. (Catherine McQueen)
(28) [The books of] Confusius is/are on the top of the self.
(Bach) or saturation (Recanati)
(27) is a complete, Expansion is
typically an optional, contextually driven, and top-down process.
(28) involves
the pragmatic process of semantic/predicate transfer.
Cohen, Wilson, Atlas, and Gazdar,
Levinson (2000)
(29), comparatives (30), disjunctions (31), and because-clauses (32).
(29) If her Grandchildren get married and have children, Mary will be happy.
(30) Brushing your teeth and going to bed is better than going to bed and brushing your teeth.
(31) Mary's grandchildren either got married and had children or had children and got married-I don’t know which.
(32) Because some of her students came to her seminar, Dr Garman was disappointed.
Pragmaticists :
-(Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995;
-Carston 2002)
-Recanati (2004a, 2010), and
-Levinson (2000) (but see e.g. Horn 2006a, c, 2009, for serious reservations, about which later)
-Cappelen and Lepore (2005) and King and Stanley (2005)
Explicature
(e.g. Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995; Carston 2002).
Explicature corresponds roughly to the intuitive notion of what is said,
First, in relevance theory, pragmatic intrusion into what is said
is refashioned as explicature
Secondly, somewhat similar to the relevance-theoretic view is the position taken by Recanati (2004a).
Third approach is due to Bach (1994, 2004, 2012). In Bach's view, there is no pragmatic intrusion into what is said. This is because certain communicative content does not need to be recognized as either part of what is said or part of what is conversationally implicated.
Furthermore, Bach (2012) has recently pointed out explicitly that impliciture comes in two forms: completion and expansion.
Completion
Expansion
Pragmatically Enriched and Impliciture
impliciture is (intuitively felt to be)
As a consequence,
Modified Occam’s razor’
Levinson’s neo-Gricean
By contrast, the second approach is championed by Levinson (2000). Within the neo-Gricean framework, Levinson argued that pragmatic intrusion into what is said is neither explicature, nor part of the pragmatically enriched said, nor impliciture.
What is Conversational Implicature
Any meaning or proposition expressed implicitly by a speaker in his/her utterance of a sentence which is meant without being part of what is said in the strict sense
What is conveyed - what is said
Augments the meaning
Example
The soup is warm
implicates
+> The soup is not hot
Conventional Implicature
Properties of Conventional Implicature
Properties of conventional implicatures can best be characterized in contrast to those of
conversational implicatures
Example
a. We want peace and they want war.
b. We want peace but they want war.
Differences between conventional and conversational implicature
Conventional implicatures are not derived from Grice’s cooperative principle and its component
maxims.
conventional implicatures are not
calculable via any natural procedure.
conventional implicatures are
not cancellable, that is, they cannot be defeated.
conventional implicatures are detachable.
conventional implicatures tend not to be
universal.
Recent Analyses
Grice's four essential properties
The first of these properties is conventionality.
commitment.
speaker orientation.
independence.
Feng concepts
non truth-conditionality
speaker orientation
infallibility
occurrency.
dependency.
context- sensitivity.
What is conventional implicature
conventional implicature is meant a
non-truth-conditional meaning
Conventional Implicature examples
Taroo is Japanese; he, therefore, knows how to use chopsticks.
(p therefore q +>> q follows from p.)
John is poor but he is honest
(p but q +>> p contrast with q.)
Other representative, conventional-implicature-licensing linguistic
expressions
actually, also, anyway, barely, besides, however, manage to,
nevertheless, on the other hand, only, still, though, too, yet, and in spite of the fact.