Grice

Abstract: From the Publisher: When we speak, we mean more than we say. In this book Stephen C. Levinson explains some general processes that underlie presumptions in communication. This is the first extended discussion of preferred interpretation in language understanding, integrating much of the best research in linguistic pragmatics from the last two decades. Levinson outlines a theory of presumptive meanings, or preferred interpretations, governing the use of language, building on the idea of implicature developed by the philosopher H. P. Grice. Some of the indirect information carried by speech is presumed by default because it is carried by general principles, rather than inferred from specific assumptions about intention and context. Levinson examines this class of general pragmatic inferences in detail, showing how they apply to a wide range of linguistic constructions. This approach has radical consequences for how we think about language and communication.

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. A Preliminary Case for Conventional Implicatures 3. A Logic for Conventional Implicatures 4. Supplements 5. Expressive Content 6. The Supplement Relation: A Syntactic Analysis 7. A Look Outside Grice's Definition Appendix Bibliography

Abstract: Acknowledgements CHAPTER I: THE DOMAIN OF PRAGMATICS 1.1 The Semantics - Pragmatics Distinction 1.2 Indexical Semantics 1.3 Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Knowledge 1.4 Pragmatics and the Competence - Performance Distinction 1.5 Grice's Theory of Conversation 1.6 The Problem of Context Selection: Mutual Knowledge Frameworks CHAPTER 2: RELEVANCE AND COMMUNICATION 2.1 Grice's Calculability Requirement 2.2 Deduction in a Theory of Utterance Interpretation 2.3 Deduction and Contextual Modification 2.4 The Principle of Relevance 2.5 Implicature CHAPTER 3: LINGUISTIC FORM AND PRAGMATIC INTERPRETATION 3.1 Conventional Implicature 3.2 `Therefore' and `After All' 3.3 `So' 3.4 `Moreover' and `Furthermore' 3.5 Interaction with Focus: `also' CHAPTER 4: RELEVANCE AND COHERENCE: DISCOURSE CONNECTIVES 4.1 Coherence in Discourse 4.2 Coherence and Content: The Interpretation of Conjoined Utterances 4.3 Coherence and Relevance: Inferential Connections 4.4 `But': Denial and Conjunction 4.5 `But': Contrast and Conjunction 4.6 Concluding Remarks Notes References.

Abstract: © Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber 2012 Introduction Pragmatic studies of verbal communication start from the assumption (first defended in detail by the philosopher Paul Grice) that an essential feature of most human communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is the expression and recognition of intentions (Grice 1957, 1969, 1982, 1989) On this approach, pragmatic interpretation is ultimately an exercise in metapsychology, in which the hearer infers the speaker’s intended meaning from evidence she has provided for this purpose An utterance is, of course, a linguistically coded piece of evidence, so that verbal comprehension involves an element of decoding However, the decoded linguistic meaning is merely the starting point for an inferential process that results in the attribution of a speaker’s meaning The central problem for pragmatics is that the linguistic meaning recovered by decoding vastly underdetermines the speaker’s meaning There may be ambiguities and referential ambivalences to resolve, ellipses to interpret, and other indeterminacies of explicit content to deal with There may be implicatures to identify, illocutionary indeterminacies to resolve, metaphors and ironies to interpret All this requires an appropriate set of contextual assumptions, which the hearer must also supply To illustrate, consider the examples in (1) and (2):