Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Gricean pragmatics
- 2 The Standard Recipe for Q-implicatures
- 3 Scalar implicatures
- 4 Psychological plausibility
- 5 Nonce inferences or defaults?
- 6 Intentions, alternatives, and free choice
- 7 Embedded implicatures: the problems
- 8 Embedded implicatures: a Gricean approach
- Afterword
- Notation and abbreviations
- References
- Index
6 - Intentions, alternatives, and free choice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Gricean pragmatics
- 2 The Standard Recipe for Q-implicatures
- 3 Scalar implicatures
- 4 Psychological plausibility
- 5 Nonce inferences or defaults?
- 6 Intentions, alternatives, and free choice
- 7 Embedded implicatures: the problems
- 8 Embedded implicatures: a Gricean approach
- Afterword
- Notation and abbreviations
- References
- Index
Summary
In Chapter 2, we discussed the Standard Recipe for deriving Q-implicatures, which is the best-known way of fleshing out the Gricean notion of quantity implicature. In this chapter, we will see that there is another way, as well, which despite its prima facie similarity to the Standard Recipe, does a much better job of explaining Q-implicatures; I call it the “intention-based” approach. Intention-based treatments of Q-implicature have been advocated by Robert van Rooij and Katrin Schulz (both jointly and separately), and Benjamin Spector, and though it may be less popular than the standard account, I will argue that the intention-based approach is the better choice, mainly because it is more general. While the Standard Recipe works rather well with scalar implicatures, it becomes unwieldy or worse when applied to other types of Q-implicature. By contrast, the intention-based approach offers a unified explanation of all varieties of Q-implicature.
Here's a first taste of the difficulties we run into when we try to extend the Standard Recipe beyond scalar implicatures. Suppose George asks Mildred, “What did you have for lunch?”, and Mildred answers:
(1) I had some of the strawberries.
Mildred's answer might yield a scalar implicature to the effect that she didn't have all the strawberries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Quantity Implicatures , pp. 105 - 132Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010