Plurality inferences are scalar implicatures: Evidence from acquisition

Scalar implicatures in language acquisition: Some evidence from Modern Greek

Scalar Implicatures: Pragmatic Inferences or Grammar?

This talk discusses the nature of different kinds of scales and controversies over issues on the generation of scalar implicatures, particularly those in complex sentences involving disjunction and another operator in its scope, and so on. The pragmatic position based on Gricean reasoning in opposition to the grammatical position based on alternative semantics and LF syntax employing the exhaus...

Are Scalar Implicatures Computed Online?

Since Horn (1972) the notion of conversational implicature proposed by Grice has been put to use to explain certain interpretive differences between expressions in natural language and their counterparts in formal logic. For example, the sentences in (1) seem to convey more than they would be expected to if the natural language disjunction or had the same meaning as the logical disjunction∨, or...

Involvement of prefrontal cortex in scalar implicatures: evidence from magnetoencephalography

The present study investigated the neural correlates of the realisation of scalar inferences, i.e., the interpretation of some as meaning some but not all. We used magnetoencephalography, which has high temporal resolution, to measure neural activity while participants heard stories that included the scalar inference trigger some in contexts that either provide strong cues for a scalar inferenc...

Experimental Evidence for Embedded Scalar Implicatures

Scalar implicatures are traditionally viewed as pragmatic inferences which result from a reasoning about speakers’ communicative intentions (Grice 1989). This view has been challenged in recent years by theories which propose that scalar implicatures are a grammatical phenomenon. Such theories claim that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions and enter into the recursive comp...