Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
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| Implicature: The garage is open and has a mechanic who
might repair the fault. R / I / C (2) A: ‘What subjects is Jack taking?’ B: ‘He’s not taking Linguistics’ Implicature: B does not know exactly which subjects Jack is taking. R / I / C (3) A: ‘Have you brushed your teeth and tidied your room?’ B: ‘I’ve brushed my teeth’ Implicature: B has not tidied his room. R / I / C (4) A: ‘Who was that man you were talking to?’ B: ‘That was my mother’s husband’ Implicature: B’s mother’s husband is not B’s father. R / I / C (5) A: ‘Is Betsy in?’ B: ‘Her light is on’ Implicature: Betsy’s light being on is usually a sign of whether she is in or not. R / I / C Feedback (1) R (2) I (3) I (or perhaps brevity, since B could have simply said ‘Yes’ if he had tidied his room) (4) C (or brevity) (5) R Comment To reinforce the contrast between implicature and entailment check that none of the implicatures from B’s utterances above are actually entailed by the sentences uttered by B. Practice In the situations below, fill in an appropriate utterance for B, so that what he says implicates (but does not entail) the conclusion in the right-hand column. In other words, if you were B, what might you say in order to convey the given conclusion to A, without stating it directly? (1) A: ‘Let’s try the new Arab restaurant round the corner’ B: .................................................................................................................. Implicature: Arab restaurants are likely not to serve vegetarian food. (2) A: ‘Meet me at Piccadilly Circus at midnight’ B: .................................................................................................................. Implicature: Piccadilly Circus is not a safe place to be at midnight. U N I T 2 6 Conversational implicature 323 (3) A: ‘Do you use your local swimming pool very much?’ B: .................................................................................................................. Implicature: B’s local swimming pool has salt water. (4) A: ‘How much do I owe you now?’ B: .................................................................................................................. Implicature: A’s debts to B are large and complicated to work out. Feedback Some possible replies from B are: (1) ‘I’m a vegetarian’ (2) ‘I’ll bring a large friend with me, in that case’ or ‘You like to live dangerously’ (3) ‘The salt water hurts my eyes’ (4) ‘I’ll have to get my calculator’ Comment Finally in this unit, we mention the possibility of the explicit cancellation of implicatures. Definition An implicature of one part of an utterance is said to be CANCELLED when another part of the utterance or a following utterance explicitly contradicts it. Example In the utterance ‘I tried to buy salt, and in fact I succeeded’, the implicature (from the first half of the utterance) that the speaker did not in fact buy salt is explicitly cancelled by the assertion in the second half of the utterance. Practice (1) Would the utterance ‘Some of my friends are linguists’ normally have as an implicature the proposition that not all of the speaker’s friends are linguists? Yes / No (2) Would this implicature be cancelled if the utterance continued ‘. . . in fact, all of my friends are linguists’? Yes / No (3) Is the sentence Some, in fact all, of my friends are linguists actually a contradiction, i.e. necessarily false? Yes / No (4) If a teacher said ‘The students who answered questions in section A have passed the test’, might a reasonable implicature be that students who did not answer questions in section A have not passed the test? Yes / No (5) Suggest a continuation of the teacher’s utterance cancelling this implicature. .......................................................................................................................... (6) Is the sentence The students who answered questions in section A have passed the test, just as the students who did not answer those questions have a contradiction? Yes / No Feedback (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) No (4) Yes (5) ‘. . . in fact everyone passed the test’ (6) No PA RT S I X Interpersonal and non-literal meaning 324 Comment Examples such as these illustrate the contrast between implicature and entailment. Entailments cannot be cancelled without contradiction. E.g. in I killed Cock Robin and Cock Robin did not die, where the second half contradicts an entailment of the first half, the whole is a contradiction. But a conversational implicature can be cancelled without resulting in a contradiction, as shown in the above practice. Summary This unit has outlined the notion of conversational implicature, a form of reasonable inference. Implicature, a notion of utterance meaning, contrasts with entailment, a notion of sentence meaning. Implicature exists by reason of general social conventions, the chief of which is the principle of co-operativeness between speakers. (The idea of implicature, which links logic and conversation, was developed by the philosopher Paul Grice.) tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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