10: Scalar Implicatures: Exhaustivity and Gricean Reasoning

Benjamin Spector

267 citations0/0 files storedBRILL eBooks

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Linguistics and Discourse Analysis Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge

Abstract

Chierchia (2002) presents a solution based on a recursive interpretation function which computes 'strengthened meanings' in tandem with the interpretation function that computes 'literal meanings. This chapter shows that both scalar implicatures and exhaustification of answers can be understood as the outcome of a pragmatic reasoning that is based on the Gricean maxims. It offers a precise formalization of the Gricean reasoning and shows that it is possible to predict the facts reviewed above by defining carefully what counts as an 'alternative answer' for a given answer to a certain question under discussion. The alternative set of any positive proposition is defined as the set of all positive propositions. The positive answers are predicted to be interpreted as exhaustive. The negative answers are not exhaustified, but nevertheless trigger some implieatures. The chapter concludes that that the facts regarding exhaustification can be directly derived from the Gricean reasoning.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 267 citations exist upstream.

References

1980Pragmatics: Implicative, presupposition, and logical form. By Gerald Gazdar. New York: Academic Press, 1979. Pp. xv, 186. $13.50.1984Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatics of answers 2004Scalar Implicatures, Polarity Phenomena, and the Syntax/Pragmatics Interface 1978Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition, and Logical Form 2004Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences 2004Exhaustive Interpretation of Complex Sentences

Cited by

2012The Computation of Scalar Implicatures: Pragmatic, Lexical or Grammatical?2011Focus and the exclusion of alternatives: On the interaction of syntactic structure with pragmatic inference 2011Experimental Evidence for Embedded Scalar Implicatures 2009Signal to act : game theory in pragmatics 2014The Acquisition of Epistemic Modality: From Semantic Meaning to Pragmatic Interpretation 201287. Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon 2011Are children with Specific Language Impairment competent with the pragmatics and logic of quantification?

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.