RT list: 'conceptually encoded information that contributes to implicatures'

Acc. to the diagram in Wilson and Sperber 1993, one of the types of
'information conveyed by an utterance' is 'conceptually encoded information
that contributes to implicatures'(Wilson, D., and D. Sperber. 1993.
Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90, no. 1/2: 1-25). I am not sure
what is concretely meant by that. (Note that this is different from
'constraints on implicatures' - which involves procedurally encoding.)

Section 6 of the paper bears the heading 'explicit and implicit conceptual
encoding'. As far as I understand, this section rejects the idea of
'implicit conceptual encoding' - at least in the case of Grice's analysis of
conventional implicature.

However, according to the following statement in one of Wilson's lectures on
Pragmatics, it seems that (at least conceptual) encoding is a correlate of
explicitness:

"This account therefore captures the intuition that decoding is necessary to
explicit communication, and that the more encoding is involved, the more
explicit it will be (see Relevance, chap. 4, sects 2 and 4; Carston 2002,
chap 2, sect 3; Wilson & Sperber 2004)." (PRAGMATIC THEORY (PLIN2002)
2007-08)

If 'conceptually encoded information' can 'contribute to implicatures' -
where 'contribute' appears to mean 'becomes part of', in distinction from
'constraining' implicatures - does it follow then that implicatures will be
more 'explicit' the more of their content was lexically encoded in the
utterance from which they arise?

Perhaps something completely different is meant - but at the moment I am
just not able to see it. Any help, esp. an example of 'conceptually encoded
information that contributes to an implicature', would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Ernst-August Gutt
Received on Mon Feb 1 11:03:21 2010