Scalar implicature

Origin

Scalar implicatures typically arise where the speaker qualifies or scales their statement with language that conveys to the listener an inference or implicature that indicates that the speaker had reasons not to use a stronger, more informative, term. For example, where a speaker uses the term "some" in the statement, "Some students can afford a new car.", the use of "some" gives rise to an inference or implicature that "Not all students can afford a new car."

As with pragmatic inference generally, such inferences are defeasible or cancellable – the inferred meaning may not be true, even though the literal meaning is true. This distinguishes such inferences from entailment. They are also non-detachable. A conversational implicature is said to be non-detachable when, after the replacement of what is said with another expression with the same literal meaning, the same conversational implicature remains. This distinguishes them from conventional implicatures.

In a 2006 experiment with Greek-speaking five-year-olds' interpretation of aspectual expressions, the results revealed that children have limited success in deriving scalar implicatures from the use of aspectual verbs such as "start" (which implicates non-completion). However, the tested children succeed in deriving scalar implicatures with discrete degree modifiers such as "half" as in half finished. Their ability to spontaneously compute scalar implicatures was greater than their ability to judge the pragmatic appropriateness of scalar statements. In addition, the tested children were able to suspend scalar implicatures in environments where they were not supported.

Griceans attempt to explain these implicatures in terms of the maxim of quantity, according to which one is to be just as informative as required. The idea is that if the speaker were in a position to make the stronger statement, they would have. Since they did not, they must believe that the stronger statement is not true.