Implicatures

Offers an accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures in pragmatics, and its interfaces with language and cognition.

Sandrine Zufferey (Author), Jacques Moeschler (Author), Anne Reboul (Author)

9781107565234, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 October 2021

263 pages, 21 b/w illus. 6 tables
21.5 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

'Given the extent to which Implicatures manages not only to provide a concise overview of the topic, but also to introduce novel perspectives in relation to it, it is bound to become an indispensable resource for both newcomers and established researchers in these fields. I am certain that several of its main arguments … have a real potential to push our understanding of the issues that surround this notoriously elusive, but at the same time all too interesting, category of linguistic meaning even further.' Stavros Assimakopoulos, Language

An accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures, a key topic in all frameworks of pragmatics. Starting with a definition of the various types of implicatures in Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, the book covers many important questions for current pragmatic theories, namely: the distinction between explicit and implicit forms of pragmatic enrichment, the criteria for drawing a line between semantic and pragmatic meaning, the relations between the structure of language (syntax) and its use (pragmatics), the social and cognitive factors underlying the use of implicatures by native speakers, and the factors influencing their acquisition for children and second language learners. Written in non-technical language, Implicatures will appeal to students and teachers in linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and sociology, who are interested in how language is used for communication, and how children and learners develop pragmatic skills.

Part I. Theoretical Foundations: 1. Ordinary language philosophy and the birth of pragmatics
2. Linguistic theory and pragmatics
3. Relevance theory and the broadening of pragmatics to explicit meaning
Part II. Types of Implicatures: 4. Particularized Conversational Implicatures: why there are conversational implicatures
5. Conventional implicature and presupposition: formal semantics and pragmatics
6. Generalized conversational implicatures: Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics
Part III. Empirical Evidence: 7. Implicatures and language processing
8. The acquisition of implicatures in the course of first language development
9. Implicatures and second language acquisition
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of mind [HPM], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Philosophy of language [CFA]