Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics and the Explicature/Implicature Distinction

Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics is a (partly) formalized theory that conforms to a dynamic neo-Gricean approach. It assumes one phase of the updating process that involves the application of the so-called Qand I/Rprinciples. Critics of the theory have maintained that such an approach does not discriminate between processes where apparent conversational implicatures enter into propositional content from processes where conversational implicatures supplement the propositional content without becoming part of it. Hence, it does not account for the Relevance-Theoretic distinction between explicatures and implicatures. In the present paper I discuss the possibility for reconstructing the distinction in Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics. After careful consideration of recent empirical observations on implicatures in complex sentences the conclusion is drawn that the distinction should not be stipulated by referring to separate principles of the cognitive architecture (neither by stipulating different modes of interpretation nor by assuming distinct phases of processing). Instead, the distinction seems to be a consequence of a global optimization mechanism the results of which can be frozen into a local projection mechanism that conforms to the principles of incremental interpretation.