Against Grammatical Computation of Scalar Implicatures

Against Grammatical Computation of Scalar Implicatures

Recently, Chierchia (to appear) (henceforth C) has proposed a radical departure from the Gricean theory: SIs, he argues, are not the product of rational behavior between cooperative conversants as in (1), but rather are computed automatically in the grammar by means of special semantic composition rules and lexical scales. He argues that reformulating the process of SI computation in this way h...

Title : The Computation of Scalar Implicatures : Pragmatic ,

I provide an overview of current theories of scalar implicature: the pragmatic (or Gricean), the lexical and the grammatical theory. The empirical focus are global and local, but also intermediate implicatures. I argue that the grammatical theory is conceptually less well motivated than even a combination of the pragmatic and the lexical theory, and that the grammatical theory therefore require...

Probabilistic reasoning and the computation of scalar implicatures

Scalar Implicatures of Russian Verbs

In this paper we address the common claim that perfective verbs presuppose the initial phase (or a process part) of events denoted by them, and assert their final phase (or a culmination part), while the meaning of imperfective verbs lacks both these components. Different formulations of this claim have been proposed by Padučeva (1996, 2011) and Romanova (2006) for Russian, and by Dočekal and K...

Scalar implicatures of embedded disjunction∗

Sentences with disjunction in the scope of a universal quantifier, Every A is P or Q, tend to give rise to distributive inferences that each of the disjuncts holds of at least one individual in the domain of the quantifier, Some A is P & Some A is Q. These inferences are standardly derived as an entailment of the meaning of the sentence together with the scalar implicature that it is not the ca...