LIN241H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Implicature, Paul Grice, Parachuting
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Conversational implicatures: are you hungry, i just had dinner. This is not an entailment of b"s answer, since it can be denied without contradiction. Infer from b"s answer that b is not hungry (below: are you hungry, i just had dinner, but i am starving. This type of inference (e. g. , that b is not hungry) is an implicature. Inference is generated by reasoning about the communicate intentions of the speaker. In a different context, the same sentence could have generated a different implicature: do you want to go skydiving, i just had dinner. The reasoning that leads to the implicature is similar but uses different background. Infer from b"s answer that b doesn"t want to go skydiving assumptions. Reasoning: a asked whether b wants to go skydiving, so b"s answer ought to address this question, in general, when people have just eaten, engaging in intense physical activity might make them sick. Being sick is something that people want to avoid.
