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Information about Implicature

Implicature is a technical term in the linguistic branch of pragmatics coined by Paul Grice. It describes the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but—distinguishing implicature from entailment—does not require it. For example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married" strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification "— not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.

This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. For example, the statement "The president was assassinated" not only suggests that "The president is dead" is true, but requires that it be true. The first sentence could not be true if the second were not true; if the president were not dead, then whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful) assassination. Similarly, unlike implicatures, entailments cannot be cancelled; there is no qualification that one could add to "The president was assassinated" which would cause it to cease entailing "The president is dead" while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence.

Implicature and implication

The specialized term implicature was coined by Paul Grice as a technical term in pragmatics for certain kinds of inferences that are drawn from statements without the additional meanings in logic and informal language use of implication.

See also

References

  • P. Cole (1975) "The synchronic and diachronic status of conversational implicature." In Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press) ed. P. Cole & J. L. Morgan, pp. 257–288.
  • A. Davison (1975) "Indirect speech acts and what to do with them." ibid, pp. 143–184.
  • G. M. Green (1975) "How to get people to do things with words." ibid, pp. 107–141. New York: Academic Press
  • H. P. Grice (1975) "Logic and conversation." ibid. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words, ed. H. P. Grice, pp. 22–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1989)
  • John Searle (1975) "Indirect speech acts." ibid. Reprinted in Pragmatics: A Reader, ed. S. Davis, pp. 265–277. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1991)

Further readings

  • Simon Blackburn (1996). The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, pp. 188-89

External links

For the journal, see .
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist.
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Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.
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Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England - August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California), usually publishing under the name Paul Grice, was a British-educated philosopher of language, who spent the final two decades of his career in the U.S.
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In pragmatics (linguistics), entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B).

For example, the sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B) The president is dead.
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Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England - August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California), usually publishing under the name Paul Grice, was a British-educated philosopher of language, who spent the final two decades of his career in the U.S.
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Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.
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cooperative principle describes how people interact with one another. As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
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The philosopher Paul Grice proposed four conversational maxims that arise from the pragmatics of natural language. These maxims are:

Maxim of Quality: Truth
  • Do not say what you believe to be false.
  • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

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entailment (or logical implication) is a relation between sets of formulae such that, if A and B are sets of formulae of a formal language, then A entails B if and only if every model (or interpretation) that makes all the members of A true, makes at least one of the members of B
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Implication can refer to:
  • Logic:
  • Logical implication as regarded in mathematical logic.
  • Material conditional as regarded in philosophical logic.

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In pragmatics (linguistics), entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B).

For example, the sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B) The president is dead.
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implicate and explicate order, described in the book Wholeness and the Implicate Order:

In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different

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An intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. An extrinsic property is a property that depends on a thing's relationship with other things.
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Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England - August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California), usually publishing under the name Paul Grice, was a British-educated philosopher of language, who spent the final two decades of his career in the U.S.
..... Click the link for more information.
John Rogers Searle (born July 31 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, and also for his account of social reality.
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Simon Blackburn (born 1944) is a British academic philosopher also known for his efforts to popularise philosophy. He attended Clifton College and went on to receive his bachelor's degree in Moral Sciences (i.e. philosophy) in 1965 from Trinity College, Cambridge.
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