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WJ-40: Issues in the Investigation of Implicature

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Book cover Meaning and Analysis

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

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Abstract

Without actually employing the term ‘pragmatics’, Paul Grice laid out the map for modern pragmatic theory in his William James lectures of 1967 by setting out:

…a distinction…within the total signification of a remark…between what the speaker has said (in a certain favored and maybe in some degree artificial, sense of ‘said’), and what he has implicated (e.g., implied, indicated, suggested, etc.), taking into account the fact that what he has implicated may be either conventionally implicated (implicated by virtue of the meaning of some word or phrase which he has used) or non-conventionally implicated (in which case the specification of implicature falls outside the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used). (Grice 1989[1967]: 118)

A version of this paper appears as Horn (2009). Thanks are due to those who attended and commented on earlier presentations of parts of this material in Milan, East Lansing, Oakland, Rochester, Sheffield, and Leysin, and in particular to Barbara Abbott, Mira Ariel, Kent Bach, Emma Borg, David Braun, Bart Geurts, Michael Israel, Manfred Krifka, Anna Papafragou, Klaus Petrus, Jennifer Saul, and Gregory Ward. The blame is all mine.

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© 2010 Laurence R. Horn

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Horn, L.R. (2010). WJ-40: Issues in the Investigation of Implicature. In: Petrus, K. (eds) Meaning and Analysis. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282117_15

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