It takes some time for a word to make it to the OED. It seems 'implicature'
will finally make it, but here's what the OED people tell me re:
"phrastic/neustic/tropic/clistic" -- R. M. Hare's tetralogy --:
>As you know, we cannot yet give you any idea as to whether
>these words will be able to be drafted. "Phrastic"and
>"neustic" look reasonably hopeful, "tropic" and "clistic"
>slightly less so.
Ah well. We have the implicature and we have the explicature. And then we
have K. Bach's implIciture, which is making into the pragmatics
bibliography in works like Levinson's _Presumptive Meanings_ or Horn's
_Natural History of Negation_.
And then there's the expliciture. What is Bach's rationale for coining
'impliciture'. Impliciture features in the index to Levinson's book on
24-25, 167, 194-8, 392n46, and 400n21. On p. 194, Levinson writes: "Bach
(1994) offers the new term, 'impliciture' (with an i) for the middle ground
[between implicature and explicature] but he views this in a different way
[from Carston's], covering only completions and expansions of the semantic
content that are in line with the structure of the sentence [...] pragmatic
resolutions of indexicals and ambiguities count for him not as implicitures
but as what is said)." A table for the 'terminologies in the domain between
'what is said' and 'what is implicated' follows which attempts to show "in
a crude fashion the mismatching alignments of terms and concepts" --
already circulated with this FORUM in a previous post. Levinson goes on:
"Bach (1994) offers us a different way to cut the pie: we should recognise
a middle ground between 'what is said' (including indexical resolution and
reference fixing) on the one hand, and what is implicated on the other. In
the middle stands "impliciture", WHAT IS IMPLICIT IN WHAT HAS BEEN SAID.
What is implicit involves both 'completion' (getting us from 'what is said'
or proposition radical to a minimal proposition) and 'expansion' (which
gets us from the minimal proposition to what is implicitly meant). Examples
of completion:
1. The suitcase is to heavy
[FOR CABIN BAGGAGE]
2. I have nothing [APPROPRIATE] to wear [FOR THE WEDDING]
Levinson notes: Grice's "conversational implicatures will, at least in many
cases, be implicitures (with an i) on this account (see Bach 1994:135).
Bach fails, Levinson says, "to give us a clear boundary between impliciture
and implicature, saying only that "an implicatum is [unlike the implicitum]
COMPLETELY SEPARATE from what is said and is inferred from it". Further, as
Bach is not really proposing any kind of "inference exclusive to
impliciture", the issue, Levinson concludes, is "essentially
terminological". Ah well. Bach's essay, which is available online, includes
the references mentioned below.
Levinson has two specific objections to Bach's notion:
* Lack of rationale: Levinson notes (on p. 400, note 21) that the
impliciture is intended to emcompass both the minimal proposition expressed
and the fuller enriched implicit proposition. Bach holds (1994:157-160) "in
contrast to Carston and Recanati, that the minimal proposition plays a
distinct and important functional role in getting to the expanded
proposition". But then, Levinson asks: why this is "surely correct", "why
did he include the 'expansions' _beyond_ the minimal proposition in the
category of impliciture?
* An implicature is, for Bach, "a conceptually independent
proposition". Bach's example
3. It's after 10.
+> The restaurant is closed.
But, Levinson notes, "we could have phrased the implicature as 'The
restaurant closes after 10'" -- with a constituent in common for what is
said. 'The restaurant closes after 10' would be, for Bach, an 'impliciture'
then, but this Levinson finds counterintuitive.
And problems remain.
Cheers,
JL
Grice Circle.
Selected references in:
Bach, Kent 1994: Conversational impliciture. Mind & Language 9.124-162
Carston, R. 1987: Being Explicit. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 713-714.
Carston, Robyn 1988: Implicature, Explicature, and Truth-theoretic
Semantics. In R. M. Kempson (ed.), Mental Representations: The interface
Between Language and Reality. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.
Grice, H. P. 1961: The Causal Theory of Perception. Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 35, 121-152 (abridged as chapter 15 of
Grice, 1989).
Grice, H. P. 1967a: Logic and Conversation. William James Lectures.
Photocopy (chapter 2 of Grice, 1989).
Grice, H. P. 1967b: Further Notes on Logic and Conversation. William James
Lectures. Photocopy (chapter 3 of Grice, 1989).
Grice, H. P. 1968: Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-meaning, and Word-meaning.
Foundations of Language, 4, 225-242 (chapter 6 of Grice, 1989).
Grice, H. P. 1969: Utterer's Meaning and Intentions. Philosophical Review
78, 147-177 (chapter 5 of Grice, 1989).
Grice, H. P. 1989: Studies in the Ways of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Kempson, R. 1988. Introduction: The Relation between Language, Mind, and
Reality. In R. M. Kempson (ed.), Mental Representations: The interface
Between Language and Reality. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.
Recanati, F. 1989: The Pragmatics of What is Said. Mind and Language, 4,
294-328.
Recanati, F. 1993: Direct Reference, Meaning, and Thought. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1986: Relevance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
==
J L Speranza, Esq
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