This article develops a Gricean account for the computation of scalar implicatures in cases where one scalar term is in the scope of another. It shows that a cross-product of two quantitative scales yields the appropriate scale for many such cases. One exception is cases involving disjunction. For these, I propose an analysis that makes use of a novel, partially ordered quantitative scale for d...

In a recent paper, Chierchia (2004) distinguishes global and local approaches to conversational implicatures and claims that several puzzles concerning implicatures in complex sentences can best be explained by a local approach. This conflicts with the Neo-Gricean view which is global in nature. I will argue that both approaches can coexist in optimality theoretic pragmatics where the proper pl...

If a speaker tells us that “some guests were late to the party,” we typically infer that not all were. Implicatures, in which an ambiguous statement (“some and possibly all”) is strengthened pragmatically (to “some and not all”), are a paradigm case of pragmatic reasoning. Inferences of this sort are difficult for young children, but recent work suggests that this mismatch may stem from issues ...

It is substantiated that particular features of pragmatics are teachable, and instruction is both necessary and effective. Determining what kind of intervention is most effectual for facilitating learners’ pragmatic development has been a central issue for researchers. To respond to the inconclusive findings in intervention studies and to extend the instructional studies in L2 pragmatics to les...

Most theories of implicature make reference to a notion of alternatives. Interlocutors reason about what the speaker could have said. In this paper, I investigate the structure of these alternatives. In particular, I ask how these alternative utterances are constrained by the interlocutors’ grammar. I argue that in order to derive certain implicatures, alternative utterances must be analyzed li...

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 cont...

Gricean implicatures are often viewed as a very weak kind of implication, viz., as optional enrichments of the literal meaning of an utterance. In virtue of being optional, they need not be present on every occasion of utterance, and they can be explicitly denied. Further, if implicatures are viewed as optional enrichments, a false implicature cannot be the reason why an utterance is infelicito...

Presupposition triggers can be divided in two groups, ‘soft’ and ‘hard,’ based on whether the presuppositions they give rise to are easily defeasible and whether they project uniformly in quantificational sentences (Abusch 2002, 2010, Charlow 2009). Recently, two ideas have been put forward in the literature in connection to this problem. First, soft triggers should be thought of as non-presupp...

Scalar implicatures are inferences that arise when a weak expression is used instead of a stronger alternative. For example, when a speaker says, ‘‘Some of the children are in the classroom,’’ she often implies that not all of them are. Recent processing studies of scalar implicatures have argued that generating an implicature carries a cost. In this study we investigated this cost using a sent...

Abstract Maximize Presupposition! (MP), as originally proposed in Heim (Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, pp. 487–535, 1991) and developed subsequent works, offers an account of the otherwise mysterious unassertability a variety sentences. At core MP is idea that speakers are urged to use sentence ψ over ϕ if contributes same new information , yet carries st...