Implicature and Explicature A Followup from Previous Presentation and Discussion by Students The Remnants from the Discussion The distinctions between Semantics and Pragmatics Studies Implicatures ID: 786373
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Slide1
Week #7:Conversational Implicature and Explicature
A Follow-up from Previous Presentation and Discussion by Students
Slide2The Remnants from the Discussion:The distinctions between Semantics and Pragmatics Studies
Implicatures
:
These are the parts of the meanings of utterances which, although intended, are not strictly part of ‘what is said’ in the act of utterance, nor do they follow logically from what is said.
Two types of
Implicatures
: Conventional and Conversational
Conventional
Implicatures
:
These are the components of the meanings of utterances which are not propositional in nature, but which have a stable association with particular linguistic expression and which therefore cannot be cancelled without anomaly.
E.g.
Salim
hasn’t registered yet
vs
Salim
hasn’t registered
Propositionally identical, but the presence of
yet
in the former implicates that
Salim
is still expected to arrive.
Slide3Conversational Five main features:They are not entailments, that is they do not follow logically from what is said. E.g. we can infer from
Agus
has a cousin
that ‘at least one of
Agus
’ parents is not an only child’. On the other hand, in the example given under
implicature
X: Can I speak to
Yani
? Z:
Yani’s
in the shower,
the inference from Z’s answer, that
Yani
is not able to take a telephone call, is not an entailment.
They are
cancellable
(or
defeasable
), that is they are relatively weak inferences and can be denied by the speaker without contradiction. E.g., Q’s reply in the following would normally be taken to mean ‘I don’t intend to tell you’’:
P: How old are you?
Q:
That’s none of your business
. If Q added
But I’ll tell you, anyway
, this would cancel the inference, but Q would not be guilty of self-contradiction.
Generalised
versus
Particularised
Implicatures
Slide4They are context sensitive, in that the same proposition expressed in a different context can give rise to different implicature:
A: I think I’ll take a shower
B:
Yani’s
in the shower.
‘You can’t take a shower just yet’ NOT ‘
Yani
can’t take a phone call’
They are
non-detachable
, that is, in a particular context the same proposition expressed in different words will give rise to the same
implicature
. In other words, the
implicature
is not tied to a particular form of words (cf.
Conventional
Implicature
).
For instance, if Q’s answer above
That doesn’t concern you
, the
implicature
would be the same.
They are
calculable
, that is to say they can be worked out by using general principles rather than requiring specific knowledge, such as a private arrangement between A and B that if one says X will mean Y.
Slide5Generalised vs ParticularisedCooperative Principles
Maxim of Quality
Maxim of Quantity
Maxim of Relation
Maxim of Manner