# Talk:Implicature

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2019 and 6 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Piercelogan.
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 This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Meiyuz, Splacanica, Dec150. Peer reviewers: Zehrahusnain, Mjosifoski.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The page was moved from Implication (pragmatics), and there had been already some discussion at Talk:Implication (pragmatics). The reason for moving it is, as stated there: implicature is the term used to refer to the special kind of inferences in natural language semantics & pragmatics, and they are special compared to the general idea of implication in mathematical logic.--Imz 19:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, what is written in the article is not correct, the content should be revised on the basis of some classical works on pragmatics (Grice) or some modern textbooks. For example, there are different classes of implicatures (as introduced by Grice), and the cancellability mentioned in the article is said to be a property of conversational implicatures, but not of conventional implicatures (see the article by Grice).--Imz 19:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This is correct -- this article is wrong. I will re-write it when I get a chance. - Abscissa 04:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
In reply to your comment on my talk page: I have already pointed out one thing in my comment above: Grice used the word implicature in a more broad sense then just conversational implicature, but the properties the article lists are basically of the narrow class of conversational implicatures. Just compare what Grice writes with what is stated in the article. I think the modern usage of the word implicatureand the related words by linguists isn't in real conflict with how Grice outlined his system of notions.
Also, AFAIU the question of strictly defining what an implicature is is a rather vague question for the theory of  formal semantics (as far as I remember, Grice basically says that he is going to give examples of some classes of implicatures, but that there is no guarantee this is all); the question of the relation of implicature to presupposition is hard. So, I htink, the article should refer to some definitions and explications that have been given by linguists in their works.--Imz 14:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, unfortunately I can't comment beyond Grice but I think that what's missing is the relationship between speakers. e.g. A: "Do you want any ice cream?" B: "It's 20 below freezing today!" The meaning of B's sentence requires A's question -- and there is the meaning of the words but also what is implied, i.e. "it's too cold for ice cream." Also, my background is philosophy, not linguistics... - Abscissa 23:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I would agree. One should always keep in mind the relationship between speakers when speaking about conversational implicatures, their nature. Otherwise strange conclusions might be made.--Imz 13:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I haven't see any reference to this in the context of Computational Linguistics, which would adhere more to a boolean definition of implicature than conversational implicature. Does anyone think this distinction worth including to assist with disambiguating Entailment_(pragmatics)? (FWIW, I'm a Ph.D. student in CL so my perspective may be admittedly skewed.) -- --Chrisirwin 02:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I have moved the section of 'Scalar Implicatures' into conversational implicatures so that, at least, it is assigned to the correct part of implicatures.77.183.254.111 (talk) 10:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
It would be easy to draw this out since what an implicature is is the sense of an utterance. Of course there are rich connections of this with a variety of disciplines. That would be a call for expansion, rewrite, whatever though not an accuracy dispute which not finding any remaining here, I removed the tag which has been on the article in one form or another for 5 years. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 20:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering about the example: there is no qualification that one could add to "The president was assassinated" which would cause it to cease entailing "The president is dead" while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence. -- isn't it true that if you changed "president" to "president's character" that you would preserve the idea that the president underwent the process of assassination while not coming out of that process dead?
Rob.fagen (talk) 16:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

? The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.
This is too brief to be blamed for "factual accuracy." What matters above all would be the content of this article, which at the moment is just better than nothing. What a shame, if no blame, to compare it with the referenced counterpart of Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy! 
Another shame may be generosity to jargons or technical if not commercial terms such as "implicature," and "impliciture," which may better be marked by the "SEE" cross-reference to commonsensical or metalinguistic "implication," synonymous to connotation, intension, etc. as well. Minimal invention of synonyms should help maximal convention of words on which language bears. This would better be the ethical code of lignuists at least. 
It appears immoral to unnecessarily invent such new words as "implicature" and "impliciture," and then necessarily make private scientific interest area, say, "implication," perhaps the best of similar encyclopedic entries. The scientist would like to invent new words, but the encylopedist should like to paraphrase them in metalanguage or critical observer's language to avoid becoming an advertising media for too many competing words. --ishiakkum 15:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

You say "unnecessarily invent such new words," but the point is that 'implication' has many dictionary definitions while  implicaturee restricts definitions in a particular way.  The "jargon"  in this case reduces unnecessary imprecision.  Thomasmeeks 14:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
On a different note, I find the part about conventional and conversational implicature to be a bit difficult to understand. How do they differ, and what are their definitions? I am personally interested in the subject, but I have been unable to find any good definitions anywhere. Some contribution to this are is more than welcome :-)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.164.134.152 (talk) 12:34, 8 November 2012 (UTC) 

Implicatures are a ubiquitous part of daily conversations, and as such, it is unfortunate that this page is lacking in depth and verified information. Only three sources are listed with all three pertaining to the first third of the article; it also seems queer that the third source, used in the section describing Grice's three conversational implicatures, is only used on the first one, while the latter two are unverified. Beyond that, the article talks about scalar and conventional implicatures, and especially confusing is the fact that there are no sources for the scalar implicature section when there are several of them on the proper scalar implicature page. Perhaps some of them can be used here on this page? On another note, the section comparing implicatures to entailments seems a bit obtuse. While differentiating between the two is useful and important, just looking at these two underscores the other pragmatic terms such as paraphrase, contradiction, and particularly presupposition. To make this section more relevant, the differences between implicature and these other terms could be mentioned with simple and clear examples to add more educational weight to the article and give the reader a more in-depth look at pragmatics. 
Dar-bear-dar (talk) 00:18, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

This article is broad in its example usage and does a good job at differentiating the different types of implicature. The examples are unique and help people who are not familiar with the field process what is being talked about. But I think there is too much assumed background knowledge applied to this article that either needed to be explained clearer or just not mentioned at all. For example, under the conventional implicature section, you write: "Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its four maxims. A statement always carries its conventional implicature." This introduction sentence does not really define what conventional implicature is and the person reading it would have to solely rely on your example to guess what it is.
Your article could be improved if clear explanation were used before introducing examples. As of right now, there is a large reliance on the examples rather than the content itself. 
But the most important thing to take note of is to make sure that when you are explaining something, you introduce the concepts without assuming the reader has taken a pragmatics or semantics 101 course. Under you implicature and entailment section, you bring up an example that is a classic entailment vs implicature example but it is not explained in a way that the lay person would know they are analyzing two separate utterances: "This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. The statement "the President was assassinated", for example, not only suggests that "the President is dead" is true, but requires this to be so. The first sentence could not be true if the second were not true; if the President were not dead, then whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful) assassination." you should explain that you are analyzing two sentences right away. Otherwise it sounds like you kind of just threw a random sentence in afterwards that would prove your point.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjosifoski (talk • contribs) 15:34, 1 April 2018 (UTC) 

I'm rewriting this article at User:Anypodetos/sandbox. Input is welcome. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I've made an edit to the introductory paragraph for two reasons: 
1. The old paragraph began with the term "pragmatics" before the term "implicature" was even introduced. Echoing Marija's Peer Review, the content does not read well to someone who is not of a linguistic background. So, I have begun the paragraph by defining an implicature, then relating it to linguistics. 
Forgive me for not adding what was originally there, I did not save it and I am not sure if I was meant to do that: this is my first edit ever on Wikipedia and I've already contacted a Wikipedia Expert to see what to do about that, if I wasn't meant to. 
Back to the content: I've also described an implicature importantly as caused by a "divergence in meaning", which is an important point that Grice uses in his definition of implicature.  
I also found while reading that a useful edit would be to include more under the Criticism section and how the implicature could contradict entailment, of which little if anything is already said. 
Thank you for reading. I hope these edits are helpful and conducive to others understanding what an implicature is and how it relates to the field of linguistics. 
Piercelogan (talk) 21:50, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

@Piercelogan: Welcome! Thanks for your edits. It's a good idea to place the definition before mentioning pragmatics. But what do you mean by "divergence of meaning"? Grice said that some philosophers saw a divergence of everyday "and, if" etc. from the corresponding logical concepts, but he argued against this view. Also, could you please have a look at your insertion "but may not know both the rules of standard English, for example and the circumstances of the utterance" – I don't understand that. Thanks again, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:05, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
The article uses 'implicature' to mean 'the thing that is implied' where the Gricean term would be 'implicatum'. I.e implicature is the verbal noun (the act/phenomenon of implying) and implicatum is 'what is implied'
Inner temple (talk) 14:50, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Quantity is listed twice and quality is not listed. This seems to be a mistake. 199.119.99.37 (talk) 00:15, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi dear User:Botterweg14. I know that I forgot to write a summary, but the parameter 'website' was ignored, and it leads to an error. There are two other errors among the references in which the title is the title of the chapter, and the title of the book is written within the ignored parameter 'work'. So the title of the book should be written within the 'title' parameter and the title of chapter in the 'chapter' parameter. I also wanted to fix the other two errors, but I noticed that you have reverted my edit. So, I decided to discuss it here. please do as I said if you agree or explain why you disagree. Thanks a lot. Taddah (talk) 20:48, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you were going for. Thanks for the note. I've fixed the SEP citation now by switching it to the "cite encyclopedia" template. I usually use that same template for papers in edited volumes but I'll leave the rest to you. Botterweg14 (talk) 21:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)