Implicatures

Henriëtte de Swart

Background and modern views on conversational implicatures

• Simons (2008) ~ Gricean view (background)

• Chierchia et al. (2008) ~ localist view: implicatures are dealt with in the grammar, at the point in the derivation where their trigger appears.

• Geurts & Pousoulous (2009) ~ globalist view: implicatures are dealt with after compositional semantics has completed the interpretation of the sentence.

Every day logic

• Formal logic embodies a set of axioms that allows lawful deductions.

• Syllogism: Two premisses and a conclusion (pattern based).

1) All psycholinguists are clever. 2) Jim is a psycholinguist. 3) Jim is clever. 1+2 implies (makes the implication),

that is, allows us to infer 3(or make the inference): entailment.

Conversational logic

• Can you be quiet please?• It is cold in here.• Boys will be boys.• Utterances convey more than the literatl

content of the question or statement. • What is the logic behind such

inferences?

What is said and what is meant

• Grice (1969): Logic and Conversation• One component of what is meant is what

is said (=truth-conditional content).• Implicatures arise when a speaker

conveys (in addition) something else.• Which principles of conversation explain

how implicatures arise?• Grice is founding father of pragmatics,

combination of truth-conditional content + non truth-conditional content.

Two types of implicatures

• Conventional implicatures: part of a lexical item’s or expression’s agreed meaning, rather than derived from principles of language use, and not part of the conditions for the truth of the item or expression.

• E.g. but: opposition, orientation: Jim is rich, but ugly (don’t marry him!) Jim is ugly but rich (marry him!)• Conversational implicatures: calculated

during the conversation (maxims).

Cooperative principle

• Cooperative principle: make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

• Norms for conversational behavior (prescriptive), but also description of how people normally behave in conversation (descriptive): Maxims

Maxim of quality

• Maxim of quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true, that is 1) do not say what you believe to be false, and 2) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Maxim of quantity

• Maxim of quantity: 1) make your contribution as informative as is required, and 2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

• A: Please, can you tell me the time? B: It is just past one o’clock (OK on the street, normally). B: It is 1.03 pm (OK on the platform with a train scheduled to leave at 1.05 pm).

Maxim of relation

• Relevance: make your contribution relevant to the conversation at hand.

• A: Johnny, how are you doing in school these days? B: Great, I had an A for my math test yesterday. B: Great, I am very popular in my Saturday soccer team.

Maxim of manner

• Manner: be clear, that is:• 1) Be brief• 2) Be orderly• 3) Avoid ambiguity• 4) Avoid obscurity of expression

Violation of maxims

• Violation of maxims often form the basis for inferences that we draw in conversation.

• Grice: implicatures (as opposed to formal logical implications).

• Different ways of violating these maxims give rise to different types of implicatures.

Generating implicatures• Grice: A man who, by saying p may be said to

have conversationally implicated q, provided that:

1) the speaker is presumed to be observing the conversational maxims/the Cooperative principle.

2) the supposition that he thinks that q is required in order to make his saying p consistent with this presumption.

3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out that the supposition in 2) is required.

Characteristics of conversational implicatures

• Calculability: provide account of how implicature is calculated on the basis of truth-conditions + maxims.

• Nondetachability: implicatures cannot be detached from truth-conditional content.

• Cancelability: implicatures are not encoded in the item, but calculated in language use, so can be cancelled contextually.

Compare with conventional implicatures

• Jim is rich but ugly. (don’t marry him!)• Alfred has still not arrived. (expectation

that he should have been here by now)• Conventional implicatures are not

calculable (comes with the lexical item).• Conventional implicatures not cancellable:• Alfred has still not arrived. #Actually, I

don’t expect him until later tonight.• Conventional implicatures are detachable:• Jim is rich and ugly. (no contrast)

Generalized conversational implicatures

• Generalized conversational implicature: ‘normally’ implicated.

• Less context-dependent than particularized conversational implicature.

• Can you pass me the salt? Question + manner indirect request.• I ate some of the cake Scalar item + quantity ‘not all’

Horn scales I

• <some, all>, <can, must>, <1,2,…n>, <or,and>

• Affirming the weaker item on the scale generates a generalized conversational implicature that the stronger one is not the case.

Horn scales II: numerals

• A: How many children do you have?• B: I have three children.• Speaker states that value on numerical scale is

3. In the context, it would have been relevant to state the higher number. Assuming that the speaker observed Quality (speaks the truth) and Quantity (says as much as she can), we can infer that B does not have more than 3 children.

• Irrelevant in a context in which one needs to have three children to qualify for certain benefits (defeasibility).

Horn scales III: disjunction

• A: What did Mary bring to snack on? B: Mary brought cookies or cake.• Assuming that speaker B satisfies Quality, and

Quantity, and the information whether Mary brought cookies or cake is relevant in the context, the hearer infers that Mary brought one or the other (but not both). Assuming that speaker B satisfies Manner generates the implicature that speaker does not know which (epistemic step).

• Inclusive ‘or’ is the ‘logical’ meaning of ‘or’, and exclusive ‘or’ is an implicature.

Horn scales IV: disjunction

• Why is inclusive ‘or’ the ‘logical’ meaning of ‘or’, and exclusive ‘or’ an implicature?

• Inclusive meaning is the rule under negation A: What did people bring to snack on? B: Jim brought chips, Susan brought fruit, but

nobody brought cookies or cake.• We don’t want the logical meaning of ‘or’

(truth table) to be context-dependent.

Horn’s Q- and R-principles

• (Q) Make your contribution sufficient; say as much as you can (given R)

• (R) Make your contribution necessary; say no more than you must (given Q)

• The Q-principle imposes a hearer-oriented requirement on the speaker. The R-principle encodes economy: it is in the interest of the speaker to minimize the effort in producing the message.

Conflicts in interpretation

• I broke a finger last week.• R-principle: existential statement

minimal way of formulation. Hearer can enrich this to ‘own’ finger.

• I slept on a boat last night.• Q-principle: if it would have been the

speaker’s own boat, she would have said so. Implicature: not her own boat.

• ‘Weighing’ different principles.

Questions and answers

• Groenendijk & Stokhof (1984). Semantics of questions and pragmatics of answers.

• Non-exhaustive answers: A: Where can I buy an Italian ewspaper? B: At the train station• Speaker B states ‘a’ possibility, not

necessarily the only one.

Exhaustivity

• Most answers are interpreted as exhaustive.

A: Who came to the party? B: Bill, Jim, Mary and Susan• Implicature: nobody else came.

Scalar implicature exhaustivity• Scalar implicatures are a side effect of

exhaustivity (Schulz & van Rooy), but exhaustivity is often more than scalar.

• A: What did Mary bring to snack on? B: Mary brought cake or cookies.• Implicature: Mary did not bring both

cake and cookies (scalar), Mary did not bring anything else besides cake or cookies (exhaustivity).

Contexts in which implicatures do not occur•Negation: It is not the case that Paul ate

some of the eggs.•Downward entailing contexts: Few students read Chierchia et al.

or Geurts & Pouscoulous.•Questions: Did Mary catch crabs or sea stars

when you guys were at the beach?

Defaultists vs. contextualist

• Implicature would lead to a weaker claim in negation contexts etc., that explains why it is missing (Strongest Meaning hypothesis).

• Defaultists: implicature is calculated by default, is cancelled in these contexts.

• Contextualists: implicature is only calculated if it arises in the context.

Experimental predications

• Defaultists: scalar items like ‘or’ incur processing difficulty under negation, etc. (because implicature needs to be cancelled).

• Contextualists: scalar items like ‘or’ incur processing difficulty in upward entailing/episodic context (because implicature has to be calculated).

• Noveck et al. (2004-2007) – ERP research, reading time: support for contextualist approach.

Status of implicatures

• Chierchia (2004, 2006): scalar implicatures are derived as a grammatical effect, calculated by the compositional semantic component of the grammar.

• Important testcase: embedded implicatures Chierchia et al. (2008) vs. Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009).

Embedded implicatures I

• Sauerland (2004): Either Kai ate the broccoli or he ate

some of the peas.• Intended interpretation: either Kai ate

the broccoli, or he ate some but not all of the peas.

• How to arrive at the implicature that Kai did not eat all of the peas last night?

Embedded implicatures II

• Gricean implicature generated by ‘Either Kai ate the broccoli or he ate some of the peas’ is: Kai didn’t have both the broccoli and some of the peas last night.

• How to arrive at the implicature that Kai did not eat all of the peas last night?

• Chierchia: it isn’t obvious how to extend the globalist approach to cases where the scalar term arises within the scope of another logical operator.

Embedded implicatures III

• If globalist account fails, the implicature must be locally generated, as part of the grammar (Chierchia et al.).

• Sauerland ~ intermediate solution: disjunction A B has both ‘A’ and ‘B’ as relevant alternatives. For these alternatives, consider relevant scalar alternatives, and rule out stronger ones (secondary implicatures).

• Do these implicatures really arise? Chierchia et al: yes! Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009): no!