Chapter2Implicature

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/301336090
Implicature
Chapter · April 2016

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-7546-5_2
CITATIONS READS
18 331
1 author:
Wayne Davis
Georgetown University
96 PUBLICATIONS 1,600 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
All content following this page was uploaded by Wayne Davis on 21 September 2022.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

CHAPTER 2: IMPLICATURE
The importance of the notion of implicature in the study of irregular negatives was
hinted at in Chapter 1. First, one of the leading theories maintains that the irregular
interpretations of negations are implicatures. Second, we have seen that at least some
irregular negations are used to deny an implicature of their root. The term implicature was
originally introduced by Grice (1975: 24) as the name of a speech act: something speakers
do by uttering words. When we say that the root of a negation has an implicature,
however, we are applying the term implicature to a sentence. In this chapter, therefore, we
will explain the notion of implicature, defining sentence implicature in terms of speaker
implicature.
2.1 SPEAKER IMPLICATURE AND SAYING
As a speech act, implicature is a type of meaning or implying. Which type? Contrast the
following sentences, all of which, let us assume, are true. The same contrasts are evident
with implies.
(1) The fact that John has a temperature means that he is sick. (Evidential Meaning)
(2) John has a temperature means that John’s temperature is above normal. (Sentence Meaning)
(3) By (saying) John has a temperature, Steve meant that John has a thermometer. (Speaker Meaning, Cognitive)
Sentence (1) entails that John’s having a temperature is sufficient evidence for us to infer
that he is sick. Evidential meaning typically exists because of correlations and causal
connections. It can be purely natural, as in the paradigm case of black clouds meaning
rain, or it can depend on human action and convention, as in the case of human utterances
meaning anger or other mental states.1 Indicates is a near synonym only when means has its
evidential sense, and is weaker. An indication that John is sick may not be enough
evidence for us to conclude that he is. Sentences or speakers themselves, independent of
their utterances, do not indicate anything and have no evidential meaning.
Whether Steve meant that John has an above normal temperature or a thermometer
depends on which proposition Steve intended to convey. What convey means here is a
matter of debate. On Grice’s (1957) influential view, to mean that p by e is to utter e with
the intention of producing the belief that p in one’s audience in a certain way. Thus
whether Steve means that John has a high temperature or a thermometer depends on
which proposition he is trying to get his audience to believe. Grice’s condition holds in the
most typical cases, but far from all. People talking to foreigners or animals, for example, or
answering a teacher’s question, need not be trying to produce belief. Speakers can mean
things without intending to communicate with or inform anyone. On my view, to mean
that p is to express the belief that p, which is to provide an indication that one has that
belief in a certain way. The fact that natural signs and indications can exist even when they
are not recognized by anyone avoids Grice’s difficulty with foreigners and animals. That
1 Grice’s (1957) choice of natural for this sense of meaning was unfortunate because Hobbes (1655) and
before him Augustine (397) distinguished natural from conventional signs, both of which have “natural”
meaning in Grice’s sense. Hobbes cited black clouds to illustrate natural signs, human vocal sounds for
conventional signs.
§2.1 Speaker Implicature and Saying 2
indications need not be completely reliable allows people to express beliefs they do not
have, and thereby lie.
Another kind of speaker meaning, “cogitative,” requires providing an indication that
one is thinking a thought or conceiving an idea but not that one believes it. Suppose Steve
utters the sentence Bill Gates is poor. He may have meant “Bill Gates is impoverished” by
the sentence rather than “Bill Gates is lacking in ability.” If Steve was being ironic, he
meant by uttering the sentence that Bill Gates is extremely wealthy (see Schiffer 1972: 2-3).
(4) (a) By (the sentence) Bill Gates is poor, Steve meant “Bill Gates is impoverished.” (Cogitative)
(b) By (saying) Bill Gates is poor, Steve meant that Bill Gates is extremely wealthy. (Cognitive)
Cogitative speaker meaning involves the direct expression of thoughts or ideas rather than
beliefs (Davis 2003: §2.2). Steve used Bill Gates is poor to directly express the thought that
Bill Gates is impoverished, and thereby express the belief that he is extremely wealthy.
Speakers mean things in the cogitative sense by words as well as sentences. Thus Steve
meant “Bill Gates is impoverished” by the sentence because he means “impoverished”
rather than “lacking in ability” by the word poor, which involves providing an indication
that the idea “poor”—a part of the thought “Bill Gates is poor” and many other
thoughts—is occurring to him.
Word and sentence meaning is a property of expressions rather than of speakers. It
depends on conventional usage and the syntax and semantics of the language, not on any
particular speaker or utterance. Consequently (3) may be true even though (2) is: Steve
may have used temperature either by mistake, or on purpose with an unconventional
meaning. As a first approximation, individual word meaning is conventional cogitative
speaker meaning: what a word means in a language is what speakers of the language
conventionally mean by it. We will explore the foundations of word and sentence meaning
further in §6.5.
Speaker and sentence meaning may diverge even when the speaker makes no mistake
and is using words with their conventional meanings. Imagine the following dialogue.
(5) SUE: Can John play?

STEVE: John has a temperature.
If this was a typical exchange, Steve meant that John cannot play. But the sentence he
uttered means something very different. Hence Steve did not say that John cannot play, he
implied it. Speaker implication involves meaning that one thing is the case by meaning that something
else is. Grice introduced the technical term implicate for a closely related speech act: meaning
or implying one thing by saying another.2 Thus Steve “implicated” that John cannot play.
Like other speech-act verbs, implicate has the noun cognate implicature that denotes either
2 The locus classicus is Grice (1975: 24): “It is clear that whatever B implied, suggested, meant in this
example, is distinct from what B said... I wish to introduce, as terms of art, the verb implicate and the related
nouns implicature (cf. implying) and implicatum (cf. what is implied).” See also Harnish 1976: 328-9; Levinson
1983: 97; Leech 1983: 9; Neale 1992: 519, 528; Horn 2004: 4; Camp 2006; Huang 2007: 27; 2014: 31; Davis
2007; 2014a; forthcoming b. Contrast Sperber & Wilson (1981: 552) and Bach (1994: 126; 2006: 27-8), who
give implicature narrower definitions (see §§5.3 and 5.4 below), and Saul (2001: 632-3; 2002), who proposes a
normative definition.
the act of implicating something or the object of the act: what is implicated. Thus Steve’s
implicature was that John cannot play. Implying and implicating are what Searle (1975:
265-6) called indirect speech acts. Someone who says Can you close the window? commonly
makes a request indirectly—by asking a question. This differs from implicature in that the
speaker did not say or mean that anything is the case. But otherwise the acts are similar.
We will see in §2.3.1 that figures of speech provide many examples of implicating without
implying.
Dialogue (5) shows that we cannot fully understand a speaker without knowing what the
speaker has implied or implicated. If we know only what Steve has said, we would not realize
that he had answered Sue’s question. If we do not know whether Steve answered directly
or indirectly, we may not know how to evaluate him. For example, if Steve insincerely said
John could not play, he lied. If he insincerely implicated the same thing, he misled Sue
without lying.
Why do speakers want to engage in implicature? The main reasons are the reasons
they make statements: to communicate, express themselves, and record their thoughts.
These actions may be designed to cooperate with others, or to oppose them. What goals
are served by implicating rather than saying something? One is verbal efficiency (Levinson
2000: 28-31; Camp 2006): through implicature we express two or more thoughts by
uttering just one sentence. Another is to mislead without lying (Horn 2010: §4). People
often wish others to believe things that are false, and not only in situations of conflict and
competition. And they nearly always prefer misleading to lying.3 The greater deniability of
implicature, and the fact that it enables us to veil our intentions, are often motivating
factors (Pinker 2007). Implicature promotes the goals of style and politeness (§2.3). It
should also be recognized that people often say and implicate things out of habit, and
sometimes do so spontaneously.
What someone has implicated is not given to us directly. We have to infer it from
evidence. We would typically recognize that Steve meant John could not play in (5) on the
basis of what he said, what Sue asked, and our assumption that Steve was responding to
Sue’s question. Alternatively, we may have asked him whether he meant John could not
play, and inferred that he did from his answer “Yes.” Because implicatures have to be
inferred, they can be characterized as inferences. But implicating is not itself inferring.
Hearers infer what speakers implicate. Furthermore, while the evidence will differ from
case to case, all speech acts have to be inferred from contextual evidence, including what
was said and even what sentence was uttered. If Steve produces [plân], for example, we
need to infer whether he was uttering an English or a German word; if English, whether he
uttered the word plain or plane; and if plane, whether it meant “airplane” or “wood plane”
on this occasion. Our recognition of what is meant is commonly automatic, though,
whether it is said or implicated.4
In the definition of implicature, saying means not the mere utterance of words—what
Austin (1962) called a locutionary act—but saying that something is the case, an
3 That people have this preference does not entail that misleading is morally better than lying. Saul (2012)
questions that ethical judgement.
4 Whether there is any significant difference in the kind of inference required to recognize an implicature
is a matter of some debate (see e.g., Recanati 2002 and Ch. 4 below).
illocutionary speech act like stating but more general. What Steve said is that John has a
temperature, something he could have said by uttering different words, perhaps in French.
Stating differs from saying in requiring meaning. That is, to state (assert, affirm) that
something is the case is to say and mean that it is. A speaker can say that Osama is president
without asserting that Osama is president in three cases: verbal slips or linguistic errors (the
speaker uttered ‘Osama is president’ instead of ‘Obama is president’ by mistake); fiction
(the author was writing novel in which Osama Bin Laden became president of the United
States); and figurative speech (the speaker was being ironic about Bin Laden). The speaker
says without asserting that Osama is president in these cases because the speaker does not
mean that Osama is president.5
Say that p and state that p both share the opaque-transparent ambiguity. Suppose
Mary says “Mt. Kilimanjaro is snow covered” in the locutionary sense (she utters the
sentence ‘Mt. Kilimanjaro is snow covered’). Then there is a sense (the transparent) in
which she has said (and asserted) that the tallest mountain in Africa is snow covered; for
Mt. Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa. But there is a stronger sense (the opaque)
in which Mary only said that Mt. Kilimanjaro is snow covered, not that the tallest mountain
in Africa is. Say “p”—in which the subordinate clause is surrounded by quotation marks
rather than preceded by that—is ambiguous between locutionary and illocutionary saying.
It is always opaque in both senses, but for different reasons. Mary said that the tallest
mountain in Africa is snow covered is true in its opaque sense iff Mary said “The tallest mountain in
Africa is snow covered” is true in its illocutionary sense. The latter is not true in either sense in
our example. In the definition of implicature, say has its opaque, illocutionary sense. If
Mary also meant that the tallest mountain in Africa is snow covered, then she implicated
that the tallest mountain in Africa is snow covered. This would be something she meant
by saying something else, that Mt. Kilimanjaro is snow covered.
Like most expressions, say that p and state that p can be used loosely or strictly (§2.3.2).
Suppose Peter utters Mary lives in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Then Peter said that
Mary lives in Washington DC is not strictly speaking true. Washington DC is only part of the
Washington DC metropolitan area. But in many contexts, it is not important to distinguish
between the two areas; precision is unnecessary and may be distracting or pedantic. In
those contexts, it will not be important to distinguish between saying that Mary lives in
Washington DC and saying that Mary lives in the Washington Metropolitan area. Speakers
in such a context will commonly use Peter said that Mary lives in Washington DC loosely, to
mean that Peter is close enough to having said that Mary lives in Washington DC for
current purposes. In the definition of implicature, say that p is used strictly.
Giving an accurate definition of opaque illocutionary saying is difficult for reasons
that are not relevant to our concerns.6 The principal difficulties concern instances of say
that p and say “p” in which ‘p’ is elliptical or contains indexicals. In those cases, the two
5 Grice (1969: 87) was idiosyncratic in taking ‘S says that p’ to entail ‘S means that p.’ So he was forced in
the case of metaphorical usage to say that the speaker “makes as if to say,” and would deny that the speaker
even makes as if to say in the case of verbal slips. Cf. Neale 1992: 523-4, 549; Bach 2001: 17; 2010: 134;
Davis 2007; Carston 2010: 220.
6 See Davis (forthcoming a) for a fuller account, as well as Grice 1975: 87ff; Harnish 1976: 332ff; Bach
1994; Levinson 2000: 170ff.
§2.2 Semantic versus Conversational Implicature 5
forms may not be equivalent. Francois said “I am in pain” is rarely if ever equivalent to
Francois said that I am in pain. Restricting ourselves to cases in which ‘p’ is neither indexical
nor elliptical, and ignoring relativity to time and language, I believe S said that p (or
equivalently, said “p”) iff: (i) S uttered some expression e as a whole sentence (or assertive
clause of a sentence); (ii) e means “p”; and (iii) by e S meant “p” (or something else that
more closely matches “p” than any anything else e means). The notion of speaker meaning
intended in clause (iii) is the cogitative one, not the cognitive sense involved in implicature.
The parenthetical alternative in (iii) applies in cases of verbal slips and linguistic errors,
which play little role in this work. Ignoring those cases, to say something is to utter a
sentence and mean by it what it means. Thus Steve said that John’s temperature is
abnormally high if Steve uttered the sentence John has a temperature, and meant “John’s
temperature is abnormally high” by that sentence. Steve asserted that John’s temperature is
abnormally high if in addition he meant that John’s temperature is abnormally high. Steve
did not say that John is sick even though he meant that John is sick because John has a
temperature does not itself mean “John is sick.” In cases of verbal slips and errors, there can
be no exact match of sentence meaning and speaker meaning. If Steve slipped and uttered
temperature instead of thermometer, then S still said that John’s temperature is abnormally high
even though Steve meant something different. For of the limited range of propositions
John has a temperature expresses (in English), the proposition that John’s temperature is
abnormally high is closest to what John meant by John has a temperature, namely, that John
has a thermometer.
2.2 SEMANTIC VERSUS CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
Steve’s implicature is conversational. It is not part of the meaning of the sentence uttered,
but depends on features of the conversational context. Had Sue asked “Is John well?”,
Steve could have implicated something completely different (that John is not well) by
saying the same thing. A semantic implicature is part of the meaning of the sentence used.7
(6) (a) Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.

(b) Washington was a Virginian.
(c) Washington was the first president.
Speakers implicate (6)(b) when they use (6)(a) literally. They mean, but do not say, that
Washington was a Virginian. Hence the literal use of (6)(a) while disbelieving (6)(b) would
be misleading, but not lying. Steve’s sentence in (5) can be used literally with its
conventional meaning without his implicature. Thus Steve could coherently have added
but he is well enough to play. In contrast, (6)(a) cannot be used literally with its conventional
meaning without implicating (6)(b); but Washington was not a Virginian cannot be added
without producing a contradiction.
The implicature of (6)(a) is carried by a syntactic feature of the sentence, the
appositive phrase. In other cases, the implicature of a sentence is carried by a particular
7 Grice 1961: 127; 1975: 25; Levinson 1983: 127; Leech 1983: 11; Neale 1992: 523-9; Horn 2004: 4; Potts
2005; 2007; Huang 20014: §2.5.
word. In Grice’s now classic examples She is poor but honest (which implicates roughly that
honesty is unexpected given poverty) and He is English, and therefore brave (which implicates
that being English implies being brave), the implicatures are carried by the words but and
therefore.
Grice called semantic implicatures “conventional” implicatures. Grice’s term was
apt but misleading. As we will see, conversational implicatures too can be conventional.
But the relevant conventions are not the lexical or syntactic conventions that give
sentences their meanings.
Bach (1999; 2006: §10) infers that (6)(b) is not a conventional implicature in Grice’s
sense from a premise that is clearly true: saying that Washington, a Virginian, was the first
president is more than saying that Washington was the first president. Consequently saying the
latter may be appropriate when saying the former is not. The evidence Bach cites shows
that Grice (1961: §3) never should have said that the conventional implicatures are
“detachable”—separable from what is said,8 and that Horn (1989: 145) never should have
claimed that sentences like (6)(a) and (c) are synonymous. The fact that (6)(c) differs
markedly from (6)(a) in that it can be used without meaning that Washington was a
Virginian entails that they differ in meaning. It is even doubtful that (6)(a) and (6)(c) have
the same truth conditions. (6)(c) is clearly true, but (6)(a) is not clearly true; (6)(a) is
definitely not a correct way to state the facts. But it is not the case, as Potts (2007: 673)
surprisingly claims, that Bach’s observation “deals a blow to the usual factual motivation
for [conventional implicatures].” For the fact that an implicature trigger (like an appositive
or the word but) must occur in scope of ‘said’ to completely report what S said does not
mean that the proposition triggered is something S said. Saying that Washington, a Virginian,
was the first president, does not include saying that Washington was a Virginian. Consequently
(6)(b) is an implicature of (6)(a), for: (i) the speaker implies and therefore means that
Washington was a Virginian by saying (6)(a); and (ii) the speaker does not say that
Washington was a Virginian.9
Let me clarify and support my claims about what is said. Suppose S utters (6)(a)
literally in non-fictional speech with no verbal slips, and means “Washington, a Virginian,
was the first president” by that sentence. Then (7)(a)–(d) will all be true.
(7) S: Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.

(a) TS meant, said, and asserted that Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.
(b) TS meant, said, and asserted that Washington was the first president.
(c) TS meant that Washington was a Virginian.
(d) TS presupposed that Washington was a Virginian.
8 Grice’s detachability claim has been repeated by many, including Karttunen & Peters 1979: 11-2, 14, 16;
Levinson 1983: 128; Horn 1989: 145; 1996: 310; and Abbott 2006: 12.
9 Cf. Potts (2005: 30), who nonetheless professes that “the ‘implicature’ part of ‘conventional implicature’
is unfortunate” (2005: 9). Potts (2005: 39) also mistakenly infers that “but does not contribute a CI” from the
fact that “Bach correctly identifies the contribution of but as part of what Marv said” (see also Potts 2005:
142, 214). (Marv said that Shaq is huge but agile.) Potts rightly agrees with Bach that saying that Shaq is huge
but agile is more than saying that Shaq is huge and agile, that but is essential describing what Marv said, and
that what Marv said entails (roughly) that being huge usually entails a lack of agility. But saying that Shaq is
huge but agile does not entail saying that being huge usually entails a lack of agility. On the contrary, as Grice
(1975: 25) observed.
(e) XS presupposed that Washington was the first president.
(f) XS asserted that Washington was a Virginian.
(g) XS said that Washington was a Virginian.
(7)(e)–(g) do not follow from (a)–(d). On the contrary, (f) and (g) are incompatible with (d)
just as (e) is incompatible with (b). Consequently (e)–(f) are false in the case imagined.10
When (7)(a) is true, S stands in markedly different and incompatible relationships to the
propositions expressed by (6)(b) and (c). This case contrasts markedly from the case in
which the sentence uttered is a conjunction rather than an appositive construction.
(8) T: Washington was a Virginian and the first president.

(a) TT meant, said, and asserted that Washington was a Virginian and the first president.
(b) TT meant, said, and asserted that Washington was the first president.
(c) TT meant that Washington was a Virginian.
(d) XT presupposed that Washington was a Virginian.
(e) XT presupposed that Washington was the first president.
(f) TT asserted that Washington was a Virginian.
(g) TT said that Washington was a Virginian.
In case (8), the falsity of (d) follows from the truth of (f) and (g). When (8)(a) is true, S
stands in the same relationship to the propositions expressed by (6)(a) and (b). There is
symmetry in case (8) where there is asymmetry in case (7).
Case (7) more closely resembles (9) and (10):
(9) V: If Washington, a Virginian, was the first president, Virginians are proud.
(a) TV meant, said, and asserted that if Washington, a Virginian, was the first president, Virginians are
proud.
(b) TV meant, said, and asserted that if Washington was the first president, Virginians are proud.
(c) TV meant that Washington was a Virginian.
(d) TV presupposed that Washington was a Virginian.
(e) XV asserted that Washington was a Virginian.
(f) XV said that Washington was a Virginian.
Saying that Virginians are proud if Washington, a Virginian, was the first president entails
presupposing, not saying that Washington was a Virginian.
(10) U: Was Washington, a Virginian, the first president?

(a) TU asked whether Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.
(b) TU asked whether Washington was the first president.
(c) TU meant that Washington was a Virginian.
(d) TU presupposed that Washington was a Virginian.
(e) XU asserted that Washington was a Virginian.
(f) XU said that Washington was a Virginian.
(g) XU asked whether Washington was a Virginian.
Asking whether Washington, a Virginian, was the first president is like saying that he was in
presupposing that Washington was a Virginian. It therefore precludes saying that
10 Manuel Garcia-Carpintero (personal communication) suggested that this is a case in which the speaker
says that something is the case without asserting it. But that is implausible given that the speaker clearly
means that Washington is a Virginian.
§2.3 General Forms of Conversational Implicature 8
Washington was a Virginian as much as it precludes asking whether Washington was a

Virginian.11
One thing that makes semantic implicature so distinctive is that meaning (6)(b) is
part of meaning (6)(a) even though what (6)(b) means is not part of what (6)(a) means.
Moreover, a semantic implicature is entailed by what is said without being part of what is
said. Hence the use of (6)(a) while disbelieving (6)(b) would be misleading, but not a lie.
I will argue in §3.6 that presuppositions are a proper subset of semantic implicatures.
2.3 GENERAL FORMS OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
Many forms of conversational implicature occur frequently in everyday speech and

literature, with a wide variety of sentences and in all known languages. They are
conventional ways of both using and understanding language. The forms are differentiated
by the relationship between what is said and what is implicated, and in some cases by the
purpose for which, or means by which, it is implicated. There are two broad clusters,
figures and “modes” of speech.
2.3.1 Figures of Speech (Tropes). The most widely recognized forms of implicature have been
known at least since Aristotle, and are taught in school as elements of style. Let S be what
the speaker said in the opaque illocutionary sense of §2.1.
Irony: Implicating a contrary of S to make light of, belittle, or mock it.
When The weather is lovely is uttered ironically in a blizzard, the speaker implicates that the
weather is awful, for he means that by saying the weather is lovely. He does so to make
light of the awful weather.
Overstatement (hyperbole): Implicating a proposition describing things as being less in a certain

respect than as described by S to emphasize how great it is in that respect.
Steve would have engaged in hyperbole if he meant that John’s temperature is quite high
by saying John is burning up and did so to express concern about how high is temperature is.
This is not irony because Steve is highlighting rather than making light of John’s
temperature.
Understatement: Implicating a proposition describing things as being greater in a certain respect or
11 Cases (7) and (8) illustrate a detail in the definition of illocutionary saying that I did not explain in §2.1.
The sentence T utters in (8) has three of what I call “assertive” clauses: the whole sentence and its two
conjuncts. T says what is expressed by all three clauses provided he means (cogitatively) by each clause what
it means. Disjunctions, in contrast, have just one assertive clause: the whole sentence. S cannot say that
Washington was a Virginian by uttering Washington was a Virginian or Washington was the first president. The
sentence S utters in (7) has two assertive clauses: the whole sentence, and Washington was the first president. The
sentence U utters in (9) has three clauses, but only the whole sentence is assertive. (10) has just one, non-
assertive, clause. I assume that ‘assertive clause’ can be defined syntactically. (In Davis forthcoming a,
conjunctions were the only type of sentence with more than one assertive clause I considered.)
higher on some entailment scale than as described by S (m e io s is ) or what S negates (lito te s ), to

deemphasize how great it is in that respect.
Steve used meiosis if he said John has a slight temperature, or John has a temperature, and meant
that John’s temperature is way above normal. He used litotes if he meant that by saying
John’s temperature is not normal, or John does not lack a temperature. The difference between the
two examples of meiosis is that having a temperature way above normal entails having a
temperature, but excludes having a slight temperature. The second examples of meiosis
and litotes are equivalent given that having a temperature is equivalent to not lacking a
temperature. The traditional term understatement denotes a class of closely related but
distinguishable forms of implicature. Understatement may be used more specifically to
express contempt for or indifference to the magnitude of something, and overstatement
may be used to express admiration for or amazement about it.
Irony, overstatement, and understatement have purposive differentia, and are
generally marked intonationally when spoken. Metonymy and metaphor differ in both
respects.
Metonymy: Implicating that something has a property ascribed to a related object by S without meaning
S.
The paradigm is the waitress who says The ham sandwich wants more coffee, meaning that the
customer who ordered a ham sandwich wants more. Synecdoche is a form a metonymy
in which the related object is a part of the subject, as in The beard wants more coffee.
Metaphor: Implicating that something has certain attributes A by uttering a non-comparative sentence
without meaning S, where the speaker assumes either (i) that having A would make it similar in
some respects to how it typically would be if it were as described in S, or (ii) that being as in S would
make it similar in some respects to how it typically would be if it had A.
Steve might respond to Sue in (5) by saying John is in the penalty box. If this is either a
truthful statement or a lie, Steve means what he said and thereby implies that John cannot
play; no figure of speech is involved. Steve is assuming that being in the penalty box
implies that John cannot play. If this is a metaphor, Steve also implicates that John cannot
play but without meaning that he is in the penalty box. Steve is assuming that being unable
to play would make John similar to the way he would be if he were in the penalty box.
Steve is likening John to, and thinking of him as, someone in a penalty box. By saying John
has a temperature, Steve might mean metaphorically that John is angry. Then Steve is
likening John to, and thinking of him as, someone with a temperature. But his assumption
is reversed: that being angry would make John similar to the way he typically would be if he
had a temperature.12 Simile is the same as metaphor except that it is conveyed by using a
12 Note that Steve is unlikely to believe that John would typically be angry if he had a temperature, and
that Steve is unlikely to believe that John would typically be in the penalty box if he cannot play. The
inequivalence of (i) and (ii) thus accounts for the irreversibility of some metaphors and similes: Blood is
money versus Money is blood (Hills 2012: 25). And as Searle (1979: 90-1) observed, Steve may be right about
comparative sentence, one containing like or as. The world is like a stage (simile) has the same
implicature as The world is a stage (metaphor), and is only slightly less figurative.
The formulations above characterize simple figures. There are also complex figures
of speech. Ironic metaphor involves implicating that something has the contrary of A, to
make light of or mock it, where the speaker assumes A to be related to S as in simple
metaphor. If Steve says thus of someone totally unattractive, Bertha is the sun, he does not
mean that Bertha is not that star, although he expresses that thought. What he means is
that Bertha lacks the properties Romeo ascribed to Juliet in Shakespeare’s metaphor.
Ironic litotes involves implicating a contrary of the root of a negation while believing that
it should not be deemphasized, as when saying It is not good that the ice caps are melting. Other
complex figures, like meiotic metonymy, can be characterized similarly. In a complex
figure of speech, one figure is embedded in another. Figures of speech may also be
embedded in constructions used literally. If, after painstakingly preparing a national
specialty for her American boyfriend, Bonnie asks “Is the haggis good?,” Frank might
resolve his moral dilemma by saying “It’s not not good,” meaning “It is not bad.” Then
Frank was embedding a litotes in a regular negation.
Figurative speech is generally not literal: speakers generally do not mean what they
say, and expect their audience to recognize that. (Litotes and scalar meiosis are
exceptions.) Indeed, a typical clue that speech is figurative is the obvious falsity of what is
said. The hunter does not mean that the weather is lovely, and the waiter is not expressing
the belief that a sandwich has desires. As a result, they do not imply what they implicate.
Figures of speech also tend to be marked intonationally (metonymy and metaphor are
exceptions). They are typically used to make speech lively, interesting, and stylish.
Both Bach (1987: 71; 1994: 144; 2001: 41, n. 3; 2006: 27-8) and Carston (2010: 220)
depart from Grice in not classifying what is meant in figurative speech as implicature. This
is partly a terminological difference (§§5.3 and 5.4). But they also make a substantive
mistake in denying that figurative uses involve indirection. When a speaker uses It is a
beautiful day ironically, for example, the speaker means and expresses the belief that it is not
a beautiful day by saying that it is a beautiful day (though not by meaning that it is a beautiful
day). Moreover, it is essential to this being irony, rather than speaking in a code, that the
speaker means that it is not a beautiful day by using a sentence by which she means “It is a beautiful
day.”13
2.3.2 Modes of Speech. I use this term for general forms of implicature that have become
widely recognized only since Grice (1975).14
Relevance Implicature: Implicating the answer to an expressed or implied question by stating

something related to the answer by implication or explanation.
John when he says metaphorically that he has a temperature even if Steve’s assumption about anger is wrong.
13 I sort out these complexities in Davis 2003: Ch. 2.
14 See also Harnish 1976; Gazdar 1979; Atlas & Levinson 1981; Leech 1983; Levinson 1983; 2000; Horn
1984; 1989; 2004; Grice 1989; Neil 1992; Davis 1998; 2014a; Huang 2006; 2007; 2014.
Example (5) is a relevance implicature. What Steve implicated (John cannot play) is
information Sue requested, and is explained and possibly implied by what Steve said (John
has a temperature). In Grice’s (1975: 32) petrol example, A said I am out of petrol and B replied
There is a garage around the corner. What B implicated (You can get petrol at the garage around the
corner) implies what B said (There is a garage around the corner), and answers the question B
implied (Where can I get petrol?). As with metaphor, the precise characterization of relevance
implicature is unsettled, but clear examples are easy to recognize.
Strengthening Implicature: Implicating a stronger proposition S+ when not understatement.
In (11), Ann implicates something stronger than what she said, namely, that Mary did solve
the problem.
(11) ANN: Mary was able to solve the problem.

BOB: How did she do it?
If Jack and Mary recently got married, and I tell you that they went to Hawaii, I would most
naturally implicate that they went together. This would not be a relevance implicature unless
I were answering the question “Did they do anything together?” The petrol example also
contains a strengthening implicature. Litotes and scalar meiosis involve implicating a
stronger proposition too, but are distinguished by their purpose (to deemphasize the
magnitude of something).
Limiting implicatures involve implicating the denial of a stronger proposition.15
Limiting Implicature: Implicating the denial of S+.
(12) STUDENT: Everyone passed, right?

TEACHER: Some did.
In (12), the teacher implicates Not everyone passed (–S+) by saying Some did (S). Hence the
teacher implicated the denial of a proposition stronger than the one asserted. This is an
implicature because the teacher did not say that not everyone passed, and so could
consistently have added Indeed, everyone did. In these definitions, a stronger proposition is one
that asserts more: P is stronger than Q iff what P asserts entails what Q asserts. What P
asserts is to be distinguished from what P presupposes (see §3.2.6).
The limiting implicature in (12) would be most natural if it were evident that the
teacher had graded all the exams already. If that is not evident, the teacher might have
implicated I do not know whether everyone passed instead, as in (13).
(13) STUDENT: Do you know whether everyone passed?

TEACHER: Some did.
15 Limiting implicatures are commonly called “quantity,” “scalar,” or “Q” implicatures, and strengthening
implicatures are “R,” “I,” or “M” implicatures. These terms are theoretically loaded (Ch. 4). Moreover, some
authors use ‘scalar’ and ‘quantity’ for both limiting and ignorance implicatures, giving both the same
“derivation” (e.g., Hirschberg 1991: 76-7, 85, 94).
Ignorance Implicature: Implicating that one does not know whether S+ is true (or that S+ may or
may not be true).
The ignorance implicature in (13) is also a relevance implicature because it implies an

answer to the student’s question. A proposition entailed by the ignorance implicature is a
limiting implicature. I do not know that everyone passed is a different and specifically epistemic
limiting implicature of Some passed. But I do not know whether everyone passed is not itself a
limiting implicature. The proposition implicated is a denial, but what it denies (I know
whether everyone passed) does not entail the proposition asserted (Some passed). Note that
whereas the same sentence can often be used to implicate either the denial of S+ or
ignorance of S+, it is hard to imagine a context in speakers would or could implicate both.
Whereas implicatures of ignorance exclude a limiting implicature, they go together
with open-possibility implicatures, where the possibility is epistemic.16
(14) STUDENT: Did everyone pass?

TEACHER: At least some did.
(14) is not a limiting implicature. The teacher in this case does not implicate that not
everyone passed. What the teacher does implicate is that everyone may or may not have
passed, which combines two implicature (Everyone may have passed and Everyone may not have
passed). If something may or may not have happened, in this sense, then it is unknown
whether it happened, and conversely. Given that they are equivalent and correlated, I will
classify both as ignorance implicatures.
Note that the ignorance implicature in (14) is not a relevance implicature. The
teacher did not imply the answer to the student’s expressed question. The student was not
raising the question whether the teacher knew at all. Indeed, the student was presupposing
that the teacher did know. The teacher indicates indirectly that the student was wrong
about that.
One mode of implicature with a name in common use is:
Damning with Faint Praise: Implicating that more laudatory claims are not true by affirming
something not very laudatory.
A famous example is Grice’s (1975: 33) letter of recommendation, containing little more
than Mr. X’s English is excellent. If the recommendation was for a position in philosophy,
the writer would be implying that Mr. X is not suitable. Damning with faint praise differs
from limiting implicature in that what is implicated is not the denial of a proposition
entailing what is said. It is like a relevance implicature in that the implicature is that nothing
close to a positive answer to the question under consideration is true.
A mode of speech similar in some respects to overstatement is loose use.
Loose use: Implicating that S is close enough to being true for current purposes without meaning (exactly)
16 See Egan & Weatherson 2011 for articles and references on epistemic modals.
S or –S.
(15) SAM: What time is it?

SALLY: 3 o’clock. (Sally’s watch clearly says “2:58.”)
In (15), Sally implicates that what she said is close enough to being true for the purposes at
hand. What is close enough will vary depending on whether Sam wants to know whether
he has time to get to a local store by 4 o’clock or whether his watch is off by a few minutes.
It would be extraordinary if Sally meant exactly what she said, which entails that it is
neither a millisecond before nor a millisecond after 3:00. She is not lying even though she
knows it is 2:58 rather than 3:00. Loose use seems similar to hyperbole because what is
said is stronger than what is implicated. But approximation is not exaggeration. The
proposition implicated in loose use does not ascribe a lesser quantity, and is fully
compatible with what is said. Hyperbole is typically conveyed in a special tone of voice,
and is used for effect. Neither is true of loose use. Loose use differs from figurative
speech generally in that the speaker will typically not believe S to be strictly speaking false,
or intend it to be obviously false.
Modes of speech differ from figures in not being used to make speech or writing
lively and not being intonationally marked. They appear in the driest reports. These forms
of implicature are not taught in school, and names for them are not in the lexicon of
typical speakers (except “damning with faint praise” and “loosely speaking”).
Nevertheless, they are as frequent and natural as figurative speech, and learned at the same
time. Speakers do not intend what they say to be obviously false, and with one exception
(loose use), do mean what they say and imply what they mean.
2.3.3 Entailment Implicatures. Loose use was not discussed by Grice. Indeed, it conflicts
with Grice’s (1975: 39) claim that “the truth of a conversational implicatum is not required
by the truth of what is said.” Since it is impossible to be closer to 3 o’clock than 3 o’clock,
3 o’clock is close enough to 3 o’clock for any purpose. Hence It is 3 o’clock entails It is close
enough to 3 o’clock for current purposes. But while Grice’s claim has been taken as axiomatic by
many,17 he did little to support it, and there are abundant counterexamples (see Neale 1992:
528-9, 534-5; Davis 1998: 6; Bach 2006: 24). Suppose a relative asks “Did any passengers
or crew members die?” The airline spokesperson could answer “All the passengers died.”
This would be a relevance implicature. What the spokesperson says (All the passengers died)
would entail what she implicates (Some passengers or crew members died). Overstatement
generally provides counterexamples (§2.3.1). If Kathy feels John’s forehead and says “His
temperature is 200E!” she surely implicated that his temperature is above 98.6E (“normal”),
something entailed by what she said.18 I call these entailment implicatures.
17 E.g., Levinson 1983: 103-4; 2000: 14; Carston 1988: 35, 40; Horn 2002: 261; Huddleston & Pullum
2002: 41; Abbott 2006: 5.
18 This is not the implicature that makes Kathy’s utterance an overstatement. She also implicates that
John’s temperature is in the high range for humans, 104E to maybe 110E. This more specific implicature is
not an entailment; indeed, it is incompatible with what Kathy said. In overstatement, we expect others to
recognize that we do not mean what we said.
Grice’s claim may have been a simple overgeneralization. For it is the exception
rather than the rule for an entailment to be implicated. For example, The fire chief believes
someone survived entails Either Mars has life or the fire chief believes someone survived. Yet such an
implicature would be extremely unusual. Cases in which speakers implicate a disjunction
by asserting one disjunct are relatively uncommon to begin with, and truly rare if not
nonexistent when the disjuncts are so unrelated. Similarly, any proposition entails that all
of its contraries are false. But when someone says “It is 3 o’clock,” it is highly unlikely that
she was implicating “It is not 2:59:37:28.”
Alternatively, Grice and others may have thought that entailment implicatures would
necessarily be semantic implicatures. Some plausibly are. Some passengers died is plausibly a
semantic implicature of All passengers died. The implicature cannot be canceled explicitly
without contradiction, and it is hard to imagine any contextual factor that would cancel it.
Some passengers or crew members died is similar in that it cannot be explicitly canceled without
contradiction. But in this case, it is easy to imagine contextual cancellation. A passenger’s
relative may be so consumed with grief that he did not think at all about the crew. It is
even easier to imagine contexts in which someone says “His temperature is 200E” without
thinking of a temperature as specific as 98.6. The speaker might not know what normal
temperature is, or might be speaking of an animal whose normal temperature is different.
I am using ‘entailment’ here to mean any condition that is necessary for the truth of a
proposition. Different kinds of entailment can be distinguished depending on the type of
necessity involved. All passengers died logically entails both Some passengers died and Some
passengers or crew members died. But suppose a man is looking at an unusual life form, and asks
“Is that an animal?” His companion answers, “It is a brain coral,” implicating an
affirmative answer. Since brain corals are animals, the truth of what she implicated is a
necessary condition of the truth of what she said. But this is not a logical entailment. The
hypotheses that brain corals are rocks or alien creatures are not self-contradictory.19
§2.3.4 Embedded Implicatures. We described the form of indirect speech illustrated in

§2.3.1 by Frank saying “I’s not not good” and meaning “It is not bad” as an “embedded”
litotes. He was engaging in implicature, since what he meant is different from what he
literally said, which was that the haggis was good. Something resembling litotes was
involved, but his utterance was not an example of litotes. Frank was denying that the
haggis was bad, and did not mean anything more positive than that. Frank’s utterance
resembled litotes in that Frank used ‘not good’ to express the idea “bad,” the contrary
rather than the contradictory of the idea “good.” Frank did not mean, imply, or implicate
that the haggis was bad, however, because, due to the embedding negation, he was not
expressing the belief that it was bad. So an embedded litotes is a speech act resembling
litotes that is part of a more complex speech act.
There are many forms of embedded implicature. For another example, suppose Sam
had asked “Is it 3 o’clock” and Sally answered, “No, it is not 3 o’clock” knowing that it is
2:58. Then Sally is not engaging in loose use. But what she meant was not simply that it is
not precisely 3:00, which would not have been very informative for Sam. She meant that it
19 This is even more obvious than the conclusion of Putnam’s (1962) well-known argument that Cats are
animals is not analytic.
§2.4 Conventionality 15
is not close enough 3:00. We can describe this form of implicature as embedded loose use.
By using ‘3:00,’ Sally expressed the idea “close enough to 3:00.” Because ‘3:00’ was
embedded in a negation, Sally was not expressing the belief that it is close enough to 3:00.
In this case, the speech act resembling loose use is embedded in a negation. If Sam said “If
it is 3:00, then I need to leave,” he would be most likely be embedding the same act in a
conditional.
2.4 CONVENTIONALITY.
Like lexical and syntactic conventions, the figures and modes of speech are customary ways
of both using and understanding language. Given how pervasive they are in both
conversation and literature, knowledge of them is an essential component of our linguistic
competence. Without that knowledge, we cannot fully understand speech or the speakers
who produce it. We cannot be fully fluent and natural speakers. Speakers who did not use
any of the figures or modes of speech would be alien and robotic. Knowledge of the
general forms of implicature and other forms of indirect speech is acquired along with
knowledge of the semantics and syntax of our native language, including the vocabulary of
speech acts (say, assert, warn, ask, order, etc.).20 Speakers learning English must learn not only
that NP is VP differs in meaning from NP is not VP, but also that it can be used to mean
what NP is not VP means. They must learn that Some S is P does not mean Not all S is P but
can be used to mean what Not all S is P does. Studies have shown comprehension and
production as early as age three for metaphor, four for limiting implicature, and six for
irony.21
Speakers pick up figures and modes of speech from other speakers, as they learn
vocabulary and grammar. Many speakers are taught figures of speech in school, but modes
of speech are generally not part of the curriculum. Knowledge of both figures and modes
is as tacit as our knowledge of syntax and semantics. It is not knowledge of facts that
define a language, but of how a language is used and understood. Since the figures and
modes are not dependent on any particular language, they can be used with all languages.
Whether they are true linguistic universals is an open question. Another is whether the
speakers of any languages have customary forms of implicature that English speakers lack.
In addition to being common, socially useful practices, the general forms of
implicature have the two other properties that define a convention: they are self-perpetuating
and arbitrary.22 They perpetuate themselves through precedent-following, social acceptance,
20 English speakers learn implies natively, but not the technical term implicates.
21 See Gardner et. al. 1978; Eson & Shapiro 1982; Becker 1986; Winner 1988; Nippold 1988; Pearson
1990; Pouscoulous et. al. 2007; Kennison 2014: 170. Recognition of indirect requests has been found in two-
year olds (Bates 1976: Ch. VIII).
22 For analysis of the applicable sense, see Hume 1739: 490; Lewis 1969; Nunberg, Sag, & Wasow 1994:
492, fn. 1; Davis 2003: Ch. 9, Lepore & Stone 2015: 20; Rescorla 2015. Convention has other meanings that
apply to relatively few natural language features, including “agreement or compact.” English speakers did not
agree to use some to implicate “not all” any more than they agreed to use some to mean “some.” Conventions
are sometimes defined as “implicit” agreements, but that seems at best metaphorical.
§2.4 Conventionality 16
normative force, individual habit and association, and traditional transmission from one
generation of speakers to another. Precedent operates when hearers call on their
knowledge of forms speakers commonly use to interpret speakers in new contexts, and
when speakers rely on that knowledge to select forms they expect will be understood. The
figures and modes of speech are arbitrary in that there are alternatives: other actions that
would serve the same purposes and would have perpetuated themselves in the same way if
they had caught on. Common practices can be arbitrary, however, without being random
or completely arbitrary.23 The fact that virus means “computer virus” is related historically
and causally to the fact that it previously meant “biological virus.” But both meanings are
arbitrary in that the word virus could have had different meanings entirely or none at all.
The modes and figures are less arbitrary than lexical or semantic conventions. There is
always some connection between what is said and what is implicated. But no one has to
implicate rather than say things, or use the implicatures we have identified rather than
others. For example, Some S are P could have been used to implicate I know whether all S are
P (“knowledge implicature”) or God is to be praised that some S are P (“Praise implicature”).
The conventional forms of implicature are pragmatic practices that complement the
semantic and syntactic rules defining particular languages. Since the forms are ways a
sentence can be used to mean things it is not commonly used to mean, they are
conventional ways of being unconventional.
I have argued that entailment implicatures are not only possible but common
(§2.3.3). Nonetheless, I do not believe entailment implicature is a conventional form of
speech th way relevance implicature, loose use, and overstatement are. In loose use,
speakers always implicate something entailed by what they say, and in relevance
implicature, they sometimes do. But while entailment implicatures are common, the
general practice of implicating something entailed by what one said is not a convention.
For the general practice is not self-perpetuating. When speakers implicate something
entailed by what they said, they do not do so because other speakers have implicated an
entailment or because they have a habit of implicating entailments. Speakers generally
implicate something entailed because others have engaged in loose use, relevance
implicature, or overstatement.
An analogy may help see the distinction between an action that is an instance of a
convention from an action that is a convention. It is conventional for people with yellow
Fiats to drive on the right side of I-95 in Northern Virginia, in that driving on the right is a
convention in America. But driving a yellow Fiat on the right side of I-95 in Northern
Virginia is not itself a convention. People do not drive yellow Fiats on the right side of I-
95 in Northern Virginia because other people have driven yellow Fiats on the rights side of
I-95 in Northern Virginia, or because they have the habit of driving yellow Fiats on the
right side of I-95 in Northern Virginia. They do so because other people have driven on
the right in America (with good results), and because they have the habit of driving on the
right.24 The practice of driving on the right is picked up from other American drivers and
23 Contrast Strazny 2005: 492; Rodríguez-Arrizabalaga 2005: 492.
24 Americans also drive on the right because it is the law. The existence and enforcement of such laws
surely increases the regularity of driving on the right, and is a barrier to changing the convention. But
Americans would likely drive on the right nearly all the time even without the law given all the other motives
§2.5 Sentence Implicature 17
passed on to the next generation of American drivers. The practice of driving a yellow Fiat
on the right side of I-95 in Northern Virginia is not.
2.5. SENTENCE IMPLICATURE.
We distinguished sentence meaning from speaker meaning in §2.1. Imply and implicate also
have senses in which they apply to sentences. Applied to speakers, implicate denotes an act
speakers perform. Applied to sentences, it denotes a property sentences have because of
the acts speakers use them to perform.25 All semantic implicatures are sentence
implicatures. Washington, a Virginian, was the first president implicates that Washington was a
Virginian. The implicature is carried by the appositive construction. The implicature of p
but q is carried by the meaning of but. As a first approximation, a sentence has an
implicature when speakers conventionally use sentences of that form with the
corresponding implicature. More precisely, a sentence ó implicates proposition I in
language L provided there is a distinctive declarative form F and function f such that it is a
convention for speakers of L to use a sentence ‘p’ with form F to mean or imply f(‘p’) by
saying that p, where ó is an interpreted sentence of L with form F expressing proposition
s(‘p’) f(ó). In our semantic implicature example, ó is Washington, a Virginian, was the first
president and f(ó) is the proposition that Washington was a Virginian. The distinctive form
is the appositive structure NP1, an NP2, was NP3. It is conventional to use sentences of this
form to implicate that NP1 is an NP2. A distinctive declarative form is defined by a set of
features that distinguish sentences possessing them from other declarative sentences. The
defining features can be lexical, syntactic, or even (as we shall see in Ch. 3) pragmatic.
Many of the conversational implicatures we have mentioned are not sentence
implicatures. Grice (1975: 37-8) called them particularized implicatures. John has a temperature
does not itself imply or implicate that John cannot play. The weather is lovely does not imply
or implicate that the weather is not lovely. It is conventional to use sentences in general
with all of the figures and modes of speech, including relevance implicature and irony. But
the use of sentences with the particular form N has a temperature to implicate that N cannot
play is not itself a convention. If examples like (5) have occurred in the past, the usage has
not perpetuated itself the specific way conventions do. Similarly, the use of sentences with
the specific form x is lovely (or The weather is A) to mean x is not lovely (or The weather is not A)
is not a convention. Speakers do not use sentences of the form x is lovely to mean x is not
lovely because others have specifically used sentences of that form with that implicature or
because they have they habit of doing so. A speaker uses The weather is lovely to mean that
the weather is not lovely because it is conventional to use sentences in general ironically.
The ironic use of The weather is lovely does not depend on any of its specific features. Ironic
for doing so.
25 Even though implicate was initially introduced as a technical term for something speakers do, it naturally
but tacitly acquired another sense in which it applies to sentences. While purists like Bach (2006: §1) protest,
an examination of the writings of linguists and philosophers of language will find that it is just as commonly
used with its sentence meaning. For random examples, see Horn 1989: 389, Levinson 2000: 91-2, and Potts
2005: 51-2.
usage is conventional but too general to generate sentence implicatures. The same is true
of loose use.
Our illustrative limiting implicature (12) is markedly different from the relevance
implicature (5). It is what Grice (1975: 37-8) called a generalized conversational implicature.
The use of sentences of the form Some S are P to implicate that not all S are P is common in
a wide range of contexts. The implicature is carried by some and the form of the sentence.
The use of sentences of the form Some S are P to implicate that not all S are P perpetuates
itself the way conventions do. Speakers use sentences of that form with that implicature
because others have done so (with good results) and because they have the habit of doing
so. As a result, Some students passed itself implicates Not all students passed.26 In particular
contexts, sentences of this form can be used with other implicatures. Some students passed
can be used to mean that none did (irony), that all did (meiosis), or that some students
studied hard (relevance implicature). But those implicatures are not associated with a
distinctive feature of the sentence, and are not generally conveyed when the form is used.
This relation between some and all is special. Contrast several or a few, which denote a
vague number greater than one but less than many. Several S are P is stronger than Some S
are P. Consequently speakers could use Some students passed to implicate that it is not the
case that several did. (Imagine the sentence uttered by the professor in response to “Did
several students get an A?” after indicating that she knows how many passed) But Some
students passed does not itself implicate that several did not. Sentences of that form are not
commonly used to implicate the denial of Several S are P.
2.5.1 Limiting Implicatures. (12) represents only one generalized limiting implicature. Many
others have been identified. (16) contains a sample of forms that have limiting
implicatures. (17) contains similar forms whose instances lack certain limiting implicatures,
showing among other things that limiting implicatures depend on specific linguistic
features. I use ‘p § q’ to mean that ‘p’ implicates the proposition expressed by ‘q,’ and ‘p ì
q’ for its negation. In some cases Not abbreviates It is not the case that.
(16) Some S are P § Not all S are P

Some S are P § Not many S are P
Not all S are P § Some (not no) S are P
A does not know everyone § S knows someone
A believes p § A does not know p
A entered a house § A didn’t enter his house
x is a rectangle § x is not equilateral
x is warm § x is not hot
x was capable of VPing § x did not VP
x may VP § Not x must VP
p or q § I do not know whether p or q
(17) Some S are P ì Not several/a few S are P

Some S are P ì Not two/a couple S are P
Some S are P ì Not half the S are P
26 The convention of using Some S are P to implicate Not all S are P is itself part of a more general
convention: to use a sentence containing some in certain syntactic positions to implicate that the negation of
the proposition expressed by the sentence containing all in the same position. Thus The sun is larger than some
planets also has a limiting implicature: The sun is not larger than all planets. See §3.2.
At least some S are P ì Not all S are P
At least n S are P ì Not more than n S are P
Not all S are P ì Not many S are not P
A does not know everyone ì A knows 17%
A believes p ì A does not regret p
A lost a book ì A did not lose his book
x is a triangle ì x is not equilateral
x is warm ì x is not lukewarm
x may VP ì x will not V
p or q ì I do not know that p or q
The first two examples illustrate a property of sentence implicatures that speaker
implicatures lack: differences in strength. Some implicates not all more strongly than not
many, presumably because some is used more commonly with the former implicature. Other
things equal, stronger implicatures can be inferred with greater probability. The
relationships can be represented conveniently by the Horn (1989) scale +all, many, some,,
wherein the terms are ranked by entailment in the form ‘__ S are P’ with the strongest first.
The higher in the scale, the more strongly the negation is implicated. Limiting implicatures
tied to linguistic scales are commonly called scalar implicatures.
A entered a house illustrates the fact that it is interpreted sentences that have implicatures,
not the bare word sequences that may have multiple interpretations. When house means
“frat house,” for example, A entered a house does not implicate A didn’t enter his house. Quite
the contrary.
Some limiting implicatures are more content-dependent. For example, Larry drank
some bottles of beer before dinner implicates Larry did not drink seven bottles of beer before dinner
because people generally consider seven bottles of beer a lot to drink in one sitting. But
Larry picked up some grains of sand at the beach does not implicate Larry did not pick up seven grains
of sand at the beach. For seven is not a large number for grains of sand.
2.5.2 Ignorance Implicatures. Many sentences with limiting implicatures have a second kind
of implicature that is never intended on the same occasion.
(18) Some S are P § The speaker does not know whether all S are P.
At least n S are P § The speaker does not know whether more than n S are P.
x is at least warm § The speaker does not know whether x is hot.
It is likely that p § The speaker doesn’t know whether it is certain/true that p.
It is about 3:00 pm § The speaker doesn’t know whether it is exactly 3:00 pm.
I believe p § I do not know whether p.
p or q § The speaker does not know whether q.
p if q § The speaker does not know whether q.
(19) n S are P ì The speaker does not know whether more than n S are P.
x is warm ì The speaker does not know whether x is hot.
x is equilateral ì The speaker does not know whether x is square.
x may (is permitted to) VP ì The speaker does not know whether x must VP.
The ignorance implicatures are incompatible with the limiting implicatures because
asserting or implying that p is proper only if one knows that p (or is close enough to
knowing for current purposes). A teacher should not implicate that not all students got As
if she does not know whether or not all got As.27 But in that case she can use some got As to
implicate that she does not know.
As we observed in §2.3.2, ignorance implicatures take a variety of forms. Two are
illustrated in (18). The coffee is at least warm equally well implicates It is unknown whether the
coffee is warm, It is uncertain whether the coffee is warm, The coffee may or may not be warm, and It is
possible the coffee is or is not warm. And any sentence with a combined ignorance implicature also
has a positive and a negative ignorance implicature. Thus The coffee is at least warm implicates
both The coffee may be less than warm and The coffee may not be less than warm. These possibilities
are set out in Table 2.1
Table 2.1: Ignorance Implicatures

Combined p may or may not be true p or –p is possible It is uncertain whether p or –p It is unknown whether p
Positive p may be true p is possible There’s a chance p It is unknown that not-p
Negative p may not be true –p is possible There’s a chance –p It is unknown that p
The distinction between combined, positive, and negative ignorance implicatures will prove
to be important in characterizing the conventions governing ignorance-implicature denials
(§3.3).
The ignorance implicatures at least generates when modifying a verb need to be
distinguished from the implicatures it generates when modifying the whole sentence.
(20) The coffee is at least warm.

(a) § It may or may not be hot.
(b) § I do not know whether it is hot.
(c) ì It is not hot.
(21) The coffee is warm at least.

(a) § It is not hot.
(b) § It could have been worse/cold.
(20) has ignorance implicatures. (21) has a limiting implicature plus a non-epistemic
possibility implicature. Moreover, the implicatures of (20) are conversational, whereas
those of (21) are semantic (conventional in Grice’s sense). The implicatures of (20) can be
canceled: The coffee is at least warm; indeed, it is scalding. The implicatures of (21) cannot be
canceled. The coffee is warm at least cannot be followed by Indeed it is hot or Indeed, it couldn’t
have been cold. Note that the implicature of (21) is preserved when at least appears before is
or the coffee, but not that of (20).
2.5.3 Strengthening Implicatures. Many different sentence forms generate strengthening

implicatures. A sample is presented in (22), along with contrasting cases in (23).
(22) N took off his clothes and went to bed § N took off his clothes and then went to bed
N turned the key and the car started § N turned the key and as a result the car started
27 Cf. Unger 1975: 250-64; DeRose 1996; 2002: 179ff; Williamson 2000: Ch. 11; Prades 2000: 126; Rysiew
2001; 492-3; Hawthorne 2004: 23-4, 134; Stanley 2005: 10-11; Pritchard 2010; Davis 2007: §II and §IX.
N studied and listened to music § N studied while listening to music
N will obey or suffer § N will obey or else suffer
N went to Myanmar or Burma § N went to Myanmar or equivalently Burma
N will swim if it is warm § N will swim if and only if it is warm
N and M moved the piano § N and M moved the piano together
N entered a house § N entered someone else’s house.
N lost a book § N lost his own book.
N (a woman) met a man § N met a man other than her husband.
N was able to solve the problem § N did solve the problem
N stopped the car § N stopped the car in the usual way
N made the car stop § N stopped the car in an unusual way
(23) N saw Mary and Jane ì N saw Mary and then Jane
N will turn left or right ì N will turn left or equivalently right
N and M moved the piano ì N and M moved the piano separately
N entered a house ì N entered her own house
N could have solved the problem ì N did solve the problem
N stopped the car ì N stopped the car in an unusual way
N made the car stop ì N stopped the car in the usual way
Strengthening implicatures are more content dependent than limiting implicatures. Each
case in (22) represents a large and open class of examples. For example, N filled the tub and
got in also implicates N filled the tub and then got in. But the implicatures may be blocked by
different content. For example, N took off his clothes and got into bed does not implicate “N
took off his clothes and as a result got into bed,” or “while getting into bed.” The general
form p and q does not implicate p and as a result q, but the more specific form N turned the
key and the M started does implicate N turned the key and as a result the M started, where ‘M’
denotes a machine with an on-off key. A generalized implicature may be blocked if
background knowledge makes it something speakers are generally unlikely to implicate.
When background knowledge permits, a sentence may have more than one strengthening
implicature. Thus N will visit France or Germany implicates “N will visit France or else
Germany” and “I do not know which N will visit, France or Germany” with equal strength.
§2.5.4 Evaluative Implicatures. There are a number of adjectives like sunny and cloudy that
denote properties that people generally think make things good or bad, that can be
possessed partly or completely, and which carry an evaluative implicature.
(24) It is partly sunny § The weather is good because it is partly sunny

It is partly cloudy § The weather is bad because it is partly cloudy
N was partly successful § N is good because it was partly successful
N is somewhat flawed § N is bad because it is somewhat flawed
It is partly sunny ì The weather is bad because it is just partly sunny

It is partly cloudy ì The weather is good because it is just partly cloudy
N was partly successful ì N is bad because it was just partly successful
N is somewhat flawed ì N is good because it is just somewhat flawed
These implicatures may not seem at all arbitrary until you realize that alternative practices
are not at all far fetched. Evaluative implicatures resemble strengthening implicatures in
that the truth of the implicature entails the truth of what is said. But the entailment is
carried by a clausal presupposition in the case of the evaluative implicatures. Midori’s
performance was bad because it was somewhat flawed presupposes, but does not assert, that
Midori’s performance was somewhat flawed. So the implicature does not count as a
stronger proposition as we have defined that term. Another difference is that evaluative
implicature is too tied to specific terms to be a general mode of implicature.
2.5.5 Common Litotes. Litotes is a form of understatement in which the speaker implies that
something has a property by denying that it has a contrary property, and does so in order
to emphasize how great it is in that respect. Thus when sampling some of the soup, Bill
might say “It is not cold” when what he means is that it is hot. Litotes is like strengthening
implicature in that what is implicated is stronger than what is said, but requires a specific
form of statement (denial) and differs in its rhetorical purpose (de-emphasis). While litotes
is a conventional form of implicature, most examples are not sentence implicatures, as the
soup example illustrates. The use of N is not cold to mean N is hot is not a convention. But
some litotes have become conventional. Thus a guest might praise the host’s cooking by
saying That’s not bad, and a doctor might express concern about a symptom by saying That’s
not good. The use of N is not bad to mean N is good, and N is not good to mean N is bad, are
conventions. So these forms generate sentence implicatures. There are a number of
common litotes.
(25) N is not bad/good § N is good/bad.

N is not right § N is wrong.
N is not unlucky/lucky § N is lucky/unlucky.
N is not cheap § N is expensive.
N is not hard/easy § N is easy/hard.
N is not happy/unhappy that p § N is happy/unhappy that p.
It is not good that p § It is bad that p.
(26) N is not cold/hot ì N is hot/cold.

N is not wrong ì N is right.
N is not expensive ì N is cheap.
N is not tall/short ì N is short/tall.
N is not superior ì N is inferior.
N is not convex ì N is concave.
N does not dislike y ì N likes y.
N does not love/hate y ì N hates/loves y.
N does not disapprove of y ì N approves of y.
It is not bad that p ì It is good that p.
Speakers could use the litotes enumerated in (26) on particular occasions, but they are
uncommon.
The common litotes are of special importance to us because they are irregular
contraries (§1.5). They differ markedly from NR contraries, however, which do not seem
to involve implicature or figurative speech. It seems that John doesn’t believe there is a god is
used to say, not implicate, that John believes there is no god, and is not at all figurative.
We will return to these impressions in Chapter 4, which examines theories maintaining that
the irregular interpretation of a negation is an implicature in every case.
2.5.6 Common Metaphors. Another category of sentence implicature is more ephemeral.

Metaphors have a typical evolution: beginning as something a speaker means on a
particular occasion; being picked up by others; catching on, which means becoming self-
perpetuating and spreading through the population; and finally, dying and becoming a new
lexical meaning or idiom. When dead, what used to be indirectly expressed is directly
expressed. The term virus as applied to computers went through this evolution in the last
thirty years. The deadest of metaphors are used with no recognition of the meaning from
which they arose. Most English speakers are unaware that cut and run began as a nautical
term for cutting the anchor cable in order to run (sail) from danger as quickly as possible.
At the stage when metaphors are widespread and self-perpetuating, they generate
generalized conversational implicatures. One metaphor still at this stage, I believe, is
ground zero. Literally, this means “point on the earth’s surface directly above a bomb
detonation.” But it is commonly used metaphorically to mean “point from which much
damage spread,” as in (27).
(27) The Lehman collapse was ground zero in the 2008 recession § It was the initial point from which much damage spread.
The synonyms surface zero and hypocenter have no such use.
2.5.7 Entailment Implicatures. We noted in §2.3.3 that it is the exception rather than the rule
for propositions entailed by what a speaker said to be implicated by the speaker, and for
what a speaker implicates to be an entailment of what the speaker said. The same is true of
what sentences implicate. We also observed that implicating an entailment is not itself a
convention. Nonetheless, some sentences have entailment implicatures. The use of
sentences with their forms to implicate something is a convention: a common and useful
practice that is self-perpetuating and arbitrary.
(28) All S are P § Some S are P

N is red § N is colored
N is bad § N is not good
p § p is true
(29) All S are P ì It is not the case that not all S are P
N is a cat ì N is not a mongoose
p ì p or q
p ì Not both p and not-p.
We noted in §2.3.3 that the first example in (28) is plausibly a semantic implicature. We
will discuss the fourth in §3.6.2. The third is the reverse of the litotes in (25). Red/colored
and bad/not good differ from cat/not mongoose in the following way. It is rare for people to
think of mongooses when they think of cats. But it is hard to think that something is bad
without thinking that it is not good, and hard to think that something is red without
thinking that it is colored.
One common feature of entailment implicatures is that the connection between the
two propositions is so close that entailment is often counted as part of what is said even
though strictly speaking it was not said. For example, in some contexts it will be accepted
that to say that the wine is bad is to say that it is not good. But in others, it is recognized
that one is a positive statement and the other is negative, denying a contrary of the first.
One large class of exceptions to the generalization that entailments are often counted as
part of what is said are presuppositions. Presuppositions are also entailments28 that are
sentence implicatures.
(30) N is hot § N exists

The S is P § There is only one S
N knows that p § p
It would be rare for people who say “Vulcan is hot” to be counted as saying that Vulcan
exists. They would ordinarily be counted as implying or presupposing it by saying that
Vulcan is hot. It is also hard to see how someone could say that Vulcan is hot without
implying that Vulcan exists. Indeed, the fact that this implicature cannot be canceled is
one reason to think it is semantic.
2.5.8 Embedded Implicatures. When a sentence with a limiting, strengthening, or

metaphorical implicature I is embedded in a compound sentence, the compound often
implicates a proposition with I as a component.
(31) If they had a child and got married (á), the Church would disapprove (â) § If they had a child and then got married (áN),
the Church would disapprove (â).
(32) If some of the stolen art has been found already, the rest will be found § If some but not all of the stolen art has been found
already, the rest will be found.
(33) If Mickey ate some of his dinner, he cannot have dessert ì If Mickey did not eat all his dinner, he cannot have dessert.
(34) If rain is likely, the ceremony will be indoors ì If the speaker does not know whether rain is certain, the ceremony will be
indoors.
In (31), the conditional If á, â implicates If áN, â because the antecedent á implicates áN.
The implicature of the antecedent is not an implicature of the whole conditional, so it is
not projected in the manner of presuppositions. Sentence implicatures can embed in other
compounds too. Consider They had a baby and got married, and the Church disapproved. As (34)
illustrates, ignorance implicatures do not seem to embed. And (33) illustrates that not all
strengthening or limiting implicatures embed.
Embedded implicatures have led some to think that the strengthening implicature of
and must be more than an implicature (Carston 2004a: 646-7), and others to postulate
“pragmatic intrusion” into what is said (Levinson 2000: 213-7). But á is true in (31) as long
as the couple both had a baby and got married, regardless of order. So while the speaker
uttering “If á, â” means something true, what the speaker says (in the strict sense in which it
is opposed to implicature) is too strong. Embedded implicatures will be discussed further
in Ch. 5.
28 As indicated in §2.3.3, I am using ‘entailment’ for any condition necessary for the truth of a proposition.
Since necessarily Vulcan is hot is true only if Vulcan exists is true, the former entails the latter. Strawson (1952:
175) and others have used the term ‘entailment’ more narrowly, to denote a necessary condition that is not a
presupposition, so that contraposition holds universally (see Van Fraassen 1968: §I; Horn 1989: 129; 1996:
303). Abbott (2000: 1423; 2006: 2, 4, fn.4) uses the term ‘ordinary entailment’ for non-presuppositional
entailment.
§2.5.9 Implicature, Focal Stress, and Topic. Focal stress has the effect of selecting some
sentence implicatures and canceling others. For example, (35) has a number of
implicatures.
(35) Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.

(a) Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.
(b) Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.
(c) Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.
(35) can be used to implicate that not all music Beethoven wrote was wonderful, that not
everyone wrote wonderful music, and that Beethoven’s non-musical writings were not
wonderful. These implicatures are most clearly conveyed by using focal stress as indicated
in (35)(a), (b), and (c). With focal stress, however, the sentence has only one of these
implicatures. (35)(a), for example, cannot be used to implicate that not everyone wrote
some wonderful music, or that Beethoven’s non-musical writings were not wonderful.29
We noted in §2.5.7 that presuppositions are a special type of sentence implicature.
Focal stress has a similar effect on presuppositions.30
(36) John was knighted by the king of France.

(a) John was knighted by the king of France.
(b) John was knighted by the king of France.
(36) implicates that France has a king, as do (a) and (b). Because of the focal stress,
however, (a) not only implicates but presupposes that France has a king. The focal stress
in (b), in contrast, cancels the existential presupposition, as would the lack of any focal
stress. Note, though, that (b) still entails and implicates that there is a king of France. The
subject position in a sentence is special in that focal stress on other parts of the sentence
does not cancel the presupposition it triggers.
(37) The king of France knighted John.

(a) The king of France knighted John.
(b) The king of France knighted John.
(c) The king of France knighted John.
Thus all the sentences in (37) presuppose that France has a king.
Focal stress is used to indicate the “topic” of an utterance. Other determinants of
the topic have a similar effect on semantic implicatures. Note how the use of the same
sentence in response to different questions has different implicatures in (38)–(41):
(38) A: Did Beethoven write wonderful music?

B: Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.
29 We are discussing sentences as types. (35) here has a further ambiguity. I intend it to represent a type
of which (35)(a), (b), and (c) are sub-types. So any token of (35)(a) is an occurrence of (35), but not vice
versa. It is also possible to use (35) to represent the parallel subtype in which there is no focal emphasis.
30 Strawson 1964: 90; Donnellan 1966: 284; Horn 1996: 304; Abbott 2006: 10; Beaver & Geurts 2012:
2453-4.
(39) A: Who wrote wonderful music?
B: Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.
(40) A: What happened to John?

B: John was knighted by the king of France.
(41) A: Who knighted John?

B: John was knighted by the king of France.
The cleft construction has the same effect.
(42) (a) It was some beautiful music Beethoven wrote.

(b) It was Beethoven who wrote some beautiful music.
(43) (a) It was being knighted by the king of France that happened to John.
(b) It was the king of France who knighted John.
By fronting the topic, the cleft construction selects the presupposition or implicature.
2.5.10 Conventionality. Semantic implicatures are part of the primary semantic and
syntactic conventions, while generalized conversational implicatures are secondary
conventions layered on top of them. The positive and negative examples above show that
generalized conversational implicatures display the arbitrariness characteristic of linguistic
conventions. There is no particular reason for some to implicate not all and not many, but not
not half or not several. Nothing about the form of ground zero favored it over surface zero to
implicate the initial point from which damage spread. There are cross-linguistic differences
too. While Horn’s (1989) research indicates that the some implicatures can be found in all
languages, others are highly variable, such as the common metaphors. Sentence
implicatures differ from lexical and syntactic conventions in not being completely arbitrary.
In the case of common metaphors, there is a perceived similarity between the implicature
and the meaning. In the other cases, what a sentence implicates bears a simple logical
relationship to what the sentence means, such as being a stronger statement in the case of
strengthening implicatures.
While figures and modes of speech are ways of using any sentence to implicate,
sentence implicatures are facts about particular sentences or sentence forms. English
differs from other languages in its common metaphors, and has different metaphorical
implicatures than it had just a few years ago. A complete description of a language must
include its sentence implicatures.
Knowledge of generalized conversational implicatures is also a critical component of
the linguistic competence of speakers and hearers. Speakers who are unaware of them are
likely to mislead their audience. Imagine the possibilities if an oblivious speaker said Your
husband saw a woman to the subject’s wife. Speakers who have not mastered sentence
implicatures may either fail to communicate or be viewed as ignorant. Unknowing
speakers may feel compelled to say what could safely go unsaid, making their speech long-
winded. Hearers (and natural language processors) without such knowledge are likely to
either misinterpret or fail to fully understand the speaker. Sentence implicatures, both
semantic and conversational, resemble idioms and the customary forms of speaker
implicature in being picked up by native speakers from other speakers in the course of
learning the language. Sentence implicatures thus perpetuate themselves from one
generation to the next. Recent metaphors are special in being picked up in adulthood, and
are liable to become idioms if they pass on to new generations.
Levinson (2000: Ch. 1) proposed that generalized conversational implicatures are
default inferences or interpretations. Harnish (1976: 334) and Huddleston & Pullum (2002:
39-40) similarly characterized a generalized implicature as what is normally implicated.
Levinson thought that if I is an implicature of ó, then from the fact that a speaker used ó
literally, we can infer that the speaker implicated I in the absence of evidence to the
contrary; the inference is defeasible but probable. This characterization is plausible for
many sentence implicatures. But not generalized metaphors: a literal interpretation would
be the default if any were. Nor for sentences with multiple implicatures (Bezuidenhout
2002: 269-70). Some members are juniors has at least four implicatures (Not all members are
juniors, Not many members are juniors, and It is unknown whether all/many members are juniors);
none of them is a default interpretation. While all four implicatures are normal, it is too
strong to say that any one of them is normally implicated. Since the limiting and ignorance
implicatures are never implicated on the same occasion, it is definitely not true that all four
are normally implicated. We have to have information about the specific context of
utterance to infer what the speaker meant. Ambiguity similarly prevents defining word
meanings as default speaker meanings.
View publication stats

Chapter2Implicature

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter2Implicature

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Chapter2Implicature

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Chapter · April 2016

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

2.1 SPEAKER IMPLICATURE AND SAYING

(5) SUE: Can John play?

2.2 SEMANTIC VERSUS CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE

(6) (a) Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.

(7) S: Washington, a Virginian, was the first president.

(8) T: Washington was a Virginian and the first president.

(10) U: Was Washington, a Virginian, the first president?

Washington was a Virginian as much as it precludes asking whether Washington was a

2.3 GENERAL FORMS OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE

Many forms of conversational implicature occur frequently in everyday speech and

Irony: Implicating a contrary of S to make light of, belittle, or mock it.

Overstatement (hyperbole): Implicating a proposition describing things as being less in a certain

Understatement: Implicating a proposition describing things as being greater in a certain respect or

higher on some entailment scale than as described by S (m e io s is ) or what S negates (lito te s ), to

Relevance Implicature: Implicating the answer to an expressed or implied question by stating

13 I sort out these complexities in Davis 2003: Ch. 2.

Strengthening Implicature: Implicating a stronger proposition S+ when not understatement.

(11) ANN: Mary was able to solve the problem.

Limiting Implicature: Implicating the denial of S+.

(12) STUDENT: Everyone passed, right?

(13) STUDENT: Do you know whether everyone passed?

The ignorance implicature in (13) is also a relevance implicature because it implies an

(14) STUDENT: Did everyone pass?

(15) SAM: What time is it?

§2.3.4 Embedded Implicatures. We described the form of indirect speech illustrated in

23 Contrast Strazny 2005: 492; Rodríguez-Arrizabalaga 2005: 492.

2.5. SENTENCE IMPLICATURE.

for doing so.

(16) Some S are P § Not all S are P

(17) Some S are P ì Not several/a few S are P

Table 2.1: Ignorance Implicatures

(20) The coffee is at least warm.

(21) The coffee is warm at least.

2.5.3 Strengthening Implicatures. Many different sentence forms generate strengthening

(24) It is partly sunny § The weather is good because it is partly sunny

It is partly sunny ì The weather is bad because it is just partly sunny

(25) N is not bad/good § N is good/bad.

(26) N is not cold/hot ì N is hot/cold.

2.5.6 Common Metaphors. Another category of sentence implicature is more ephemeral.

The synonyms surface zero and hypocenter have no such use.

(28) All S are P § Some S are P

(30) N is hot § N exists

2.5.8 Embedded Implicatures. When a sentence with a limiting, strengthening, or

(35) Beethoven wrote some wonderful music.

(36) John was knighted by the king of France.

(37) The king of France knighted John.

(38) A: Did Beethoven write wonderful music?

(40) A: What happened to John?

(41) A: Who knighted John?

The cleft construction has the same effect.

(42) (a) It was some beautiful music Beethoven wrote.

View publication stats

You might also like