Conversational

implicature:
Consolidation exercises
Shaozhong Liu, Ph.D. (Pragmatics) /
Ph.D. (Higher Education)
School of Foreign Studies,
Guilin University of Electronic Technology
Homepage: www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu
Blog: cyrusliu.blog.163.com
Email: shaozhong@hotmail.com
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essentials in pragmatics, fall 2011

Terms
Implicature
Conventional / general conversational
implicature
Particular / particularized conversational
implicature
Cooperation
Principle
Maxim
Violating
Flouting
Mutual knowledge
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Types of implicature and

degree of background
knowledge dependence

There are basically 2 types of

implicature: general / conventional
convensational implicature and
particular / particularized conversational
implicature.
Their difference lies in the degree of
background knowledge dependence in
inferring the speaker meaning: Normally
the former needs less than the latter.
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Definite vs. indefinite

knowledge
Articles, possessives, demonstratives, etc.
may indicate levels of certainty or
definiteness of inference.
Most people may infer the following without
more contextual information or effort. E.g.:
1)Carmen: Did you get the milk and the eggs?
Dave: I got the milk.
Did Dave buy the eggs? (Like in TOEFL
listening test!)

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2) Carmen: Did you manage to fix that

leak?
Dave: I tried to.
Did Dave fix the leak?
3) Faye: I hear youve invited Mat and Chris.
Ed: I didnt invite Mat.
Did Ed invite Chris?
4) Steve: What happened to your flowers?
Jane: A dog got into the garden.
Did the dog belong to Jane?
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5) Jane: Who used all the printer paper?

Steve: I used some of it.
6) Jane: I hear youve always late with the rent.
Steve: Well, sometimes I am.
7) Jane: Mike and Annie should be here by now.
Was their plane late?
Steve: Possibly.
8) Jane: This cheese looks funny. The label said
to store it in a cool place.
Steve: Yeah, I did.

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Hedges and scalar

implicature
Words like some, all, maybe, possibly,
late etc. are vague in meaning.
In conversations, such words may give rise to
levels of implicature, hence scalar implicature.
Scale of quantity: some, most, all
Scale of frequency: sometimes, often, always
Scale of coldness: cool, cold, freezing
Scale of likelihood: possbily, probably,
certainly

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 Normally, we assume, following the

cooperative principle, that, where speakers
have a scale of values at their disposal,
they will choose the one that is truthful
(maxim of quality) and optionally
informative (maxim of quantity).
And normally we draw the implicature not
any of the higher values on the scale.
Such drawn implicatures do not require an
extra knowledge to extract the meaning,
hence generalized conversational
implicatures.
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Implicature requiring extra background

knowledge in inference
9) Tom: Are you going to Marks party tonight?
Annie: My parents are in town. (No)
10) Tom: Wheres the salad dressing?
Gabriela: Weve run out of olive oil. (There
isnt any salad dressing)
11) Steve: Whats with your mother?
Jane: Lets go into the garden. (I cant talk
about it here)
12) Mat: Want some fudge brownies?
Chris: There must be 20,000 calories
there. (No)
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Cancelling presuppositions or
implicatures
Cancelling an existential presupposition:
Mike: What happened?
Annie: Steves dog wrecked the garden and in
fact, Steve doesnt have a dog.
Cancelling a lexical presupposition:
Mike: Whats up?
Annie: Ive stopped smoking although Ive
never
smoked.
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 Cancelling a generalized implicature:

Mike: Whats happened to the shampoo?
Annie: I used most of it actually, I used
all of it.
Cancelling a particularized implicature:
Mike: Are you coming to the party?
Annie: My parents are in town but I am
coming.

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Now you try your hands on the

cancellation exercise:
1) Linda: Whats with Jean?
Jen: She discovered that her central
heatings
broken.
(Her central heating is broken.)
2) Terry: How do you like your bath?
Phil: Warm.
(I dont like it hot.)
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3) Annie: What do you think of this

necklace and bracelet?
Mike: The bracelet is beautiful.
(The necklace is not beautiful.)
4) Lois: Has the kitchen been painted?
Gabriela: Toms away. (No.)
5) Jane: Have you seen my sweater?
Steve: Theres a sweater on the sofa.
(Its not Steves sweater.)
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6) Mike: How come Marys all dressed

up?
Annie: Were going to the D-E-N-T-IS-T.
(Annie hates the dentist.)
7) Austin: It works now.
Barbara: When did Eric fix it?
(Eric fixed it.)
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Inference in brackets:
presupposition or implicature?
1) Mike: I heard about the mess.
Dave: Yeah, Steve really regrets sending
that e-mail. (Steve sent that e-mail.)
2) Patric: I didnt take it.
Virginia: Why do you always lie? (You
always lie.)
3) Doris: Did Carmen like the party?
Dave: She left after an hour. (She didnt
like the party.)
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4) Mat: How did you do on those exams?

Chris: I failed physics. (I didnt fail the
others.)
5) Reporter: Senator, what is the present
state of your marriage?
Senator: Well, we, I think have been able
to make some very good progress and its I
would say that its its its delightful that
were able to to share the time and the
relationship that we that we do not share.
(The marriage is not in good state.)
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6) Steve: Did you buy the car?

Ed: It cost twice as much as I
thought it would. (Ed didnt buy the
car.)
7) Maggie: The bathrooms flooded!
James: Someone must have left the
tap on. (It wasnt James who left the
tap on.)
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Hyponym, super-ordinate, and

implicature
Hyponym
ordinate
rose
salmon
hammer
jeep
China
Guilin
Lingui
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Superflower
fish
tool
automobile
country
city
county
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1) Mike: Did you buy her a rose?

Annie: I bought her a flower.
2) Jane: Theres salmon on the menu.
Steve: I dont like fish.
3) Ed: Be careful of that sofa.
Meridyth: Its a piece of furniture, Dad.
4) Mat: so youve taken up teaching?
Chris: Its a job.
5) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: No way.
6) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: Sean is only 2.
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7) Mary: Its time that we get divorced.

Mike: Thats a stupid idea.
8) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: Anyway.
9) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: Dont ever regret over your
decision.
10) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: It that your idea?
11) Mary: I want to divorce you.
Mike: Are you really serious?
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Conjunctions and
implicature
1) Tom stayed and Mark left.
2) Tom stayed but Phil stayed too.
3) Stop that or Ill leave.
4) Do you want milk or juice?
5) Shell stay unless you return before
10.
6) Ill join you for the dinner if you can
make it in Wei Dao Zhi Zao.
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Summary
We have further discussed 2 types of
conversational implicatures: generalized
and particularized.
Generalized implicatures can be drawn
with very little inside knowledge. If you
heard a tape recording of the conversation
but knew nothing about the participants or
the physical characteristics of the context,
you could still draw those implicatures.
They are closely connected to the degree
of informativeness that we normally
expect a speakers utterance to prove.
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 Scalar implicatures are a special type of

generalized implicature where the inference is
made by reference to a scale of values, one of
which has been chosen by the speaker. The
speakers choice implicates not the higher
values.
Particularized implicatures require not only
general knowledge but also knowledge which is
particular or local to the speaker and the
hearer, and often to the physical context of the
utterance as well.
Both generalized and particularized implicatures
differ from presuppositions in that they sound
much less contradictory when they are cancelled
by the speaker.
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 Grices work was an important first step in

systematically examining how hearers work
to derive the ultimate message from the
words that are actually uttered. He
recognized that, of all the maxims, relevance
was probably the most important, although
he never really tackled the issue of how
speakers and hearers actually assign
relevance to particular pieces of information.
Sperber and Wilson have carried this work
forward by looking even more systematically
at the various kinds of inferencing that take
place in normal convergence. They suggest
that all four maxims can be subsumed under
relevance.
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