Language: Conventional implicature

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Language: Conventional implicature발음듣기

(intro music) My name is Will Salmon, and I'm an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Minnesota Duluth.발음듣기

Today I'm going to talk to you about different kinds of linguistic meanings, specifically about conventional implicature and conversational implicature, one way of dividing up linguistic meaning that's been very influential over the last 40 years or so, which grew out of the work of the Oxford philosopher Paul Grice and his notions of conversational implicature and conventional implicature.발음듣기

So a good starting place for us is to notice that there's often a difference between what a speaker says and what a speaker means.발음듣기

Take the sentence "I'm tired." Someone asks you to go out on a date and you say "I'm tired" as a response to them.발음듣기

The linguistic meaning of what you had said is just that you were tired, that is, the meanings of the words "I," "am," and "tired" are taken literally, combined into a sentence, and give you the straightforward meaning simply that you were tired.발음듣기

And that's all that you have said, taken literally.발음듣기

However, you've likely conveyed much more than this to the person who asked you out on a date.발음듣기

You most likely conveyed to the person that you don't want to go out on a date with them.발음듣기

So the linguistic meaning here would be that you were tired while the speaker meaning would be what you really intended to convey to the person, namely, that you don't want to go out on the date.발음듣기

So you've turned down the invitation in a kind of an indirect way.발음듣기

This is what Grice would have called a "conversational implicature."발음듣기

So conversational implicatures are messages that speakers convey that are often above and beyond the literal meaning of the words that they speak.발음듣기

The trick to it all is that speakers hope to get hearers to recognize their intention in speaking, even if this intention doesn't line up directly with the words that a speaker speaks.발음듣기

So in uttering a sentence, I hope to get my hearer to recognize what my purpose is in uttering it.발음듣기

If I say "I'm tired" in response to an invitation, I hope that my hearer will ask herself why I'm telling her that I'm tired.발음듣기

And as a result, I hope that she'll infer that I don't really want to go out on the date.발음듣기

So we now have two potential messages here.발음듣기

The first message is the literal meaning of the sentence "I am tired."발음듣기

The second message is the implied meaning, that I don't want to go on the date.발음듣기

Now, the first of these meanings is what we call "conventional meaning" or "linguistic meaning," that is, it's attached directly to the meanings of the words in question.발음듣기

The second meaning, which is the implied meaning, is non-conventional.발음듣기

Now, by this I mean that the second meaning isn't attached to the meanings of the words "I am tired."발음듣기

So if I say "I'm tired" in another context, it won't count as turning down a date.발음듣기

For example, I could say "I'm tired" late at night in order to imply that I'm ready to go to bed.발음듣기

Or I could say "I am tired" first thing in the morning in order to imply that I don't want to get out of bed.발음듣기

Or maybe I'm in an argument with someone and I can say "I am tired" in order to imply that I don't want to argue it anymore.발음듣기

In all the cases, I will just have said literally that I'm tired, but I might have implied different things in all of the cases.발음듣기

So you can use the same sentence to imply many different things and many different contexts.발음듣기

And the implied meaning is non-conventional.발음듣기

Now, philosophers and linguists often talk about the truth conditional meaning of sentences.발음듣기

Now, this is a kind of meaning that's directly part of the literal meaning of a sentence, and it's what's used to determine whether a sentence is true or not.발음듣기

So for the sentence "I am tired," this sentence will be true if and only if I am actually tired.발음듣기

The truth conditional meaning of the sentence is not necessarily a part then of the implied meanings we've discussed so far.발음듣기

So if I say "I'm tired" to imply that I don't want to go on a date, the truth conditions still just depend on whether or not I'm actually tired.발음듣기

The part about not wanting to go on the date doesn't factor into the truth conditions of "I'm tired."발음듣기

So the conversational implicature meaning, the part about not wanting to go on the date isn't truth conditional.발음듣기

So let's sum up what we've got so far.발음듣기

We have truth conditional meaning, which is literal and conventional.발음듣기

And we have non-truth conditional meaning, which is implied and non-conventional.발음듣기

This basic distinction takes us a long way toward understanding the kinds of meaning that we find in everyday language.발음듣기

But there's one other dimension of meaning which is also very important.발음듣기

This is the conventional implicature meaning.발음듣기

And this kind of meaning seems to sit midway between the two kinds of meaning we've discussed so far, that is, conventional implicature is conventional, is part of the direct, actual, literal meaning of the words in question.발음듣기

But at the same time it's not truth conditional.발음듣기

So let's look at an example.발음듣기

Think about a sentence like "John is short, but he is strong."발음듣기

This sentence is equal in terms of truth conditions, to John is short and he is strong.발음듣기

As long as John is both short and strong, both sentences are true.발음듣기

If he is not both short and strong, then both sentences are false.발음듣기

There's no in between here. The question is, what is the "but" sentence have that the "and" sentence is lacking?발음듣기

And the difference seems to be in there being some kind of contrast in the "but" sentence that's not present in the "and" sentence.발음듣기

And this contrast is between the expectations we have about being short and about being strong.발음듣기

So maybe we don't normally think of someone who is short as also being strong, or something along these lines.발음듣기

In any case, there's a contrast there between these two parts of the sentence.발음듣기

Now, this contrast is clearly part of the conventional literal meaning of "but."발음듣기

If we substitute "and" for "but," we can see that the truth conditions stay the same.발음듣기

But now the contrast is gone.발음듣기

So the contrast must be a conventional part of the meaning of "but."발음듣기

At the same time, though, the contrast is not part of truth conditional meaning.발음듣기

We know this because the "and"-"but" sentences we just mentioned have the same truth conditions.발음듣기

But only one of the sentences has the actual contrasting feature.발음듣기

So Grice called this kind of conventional but non-truth conditional meaning a conventional implicature.발음듣기

They're found all over everyday language.발음듣기

For example, sentences like "Frankly, the Vikings didn't win" or "Those darn Vikings lost the game" are used to express truth-evaluable statements as well as a speaker's attitudes toward the statements.발음듣기

Consider the second sentence, "Those darn Vikings lost the game."발음듣기

Here a speaker's made a simple claim about the Vikings losing a game.발음듣기

The speaker has also conveyed an emotion toward that claim, namely, that the speaker is frustrated or angry over the Vikings having lost.발음듣기

This communicated emotion is important in helping us understand the speaker's feelings, but it's not important to the truth conditions of the claim.발음듣기

All that matters to the truth conditions is whether or not the Vikings lost the game.발음듣기

So this kind of emotive meaning is directly associated with the word "darn," that is, its conventional meaning.발음듣기

But it doesn't enter into the truth conditions of the sentence.발음듣기

As a result, we can talk about the meaning of this word and many, many related words in terms of conventional implicature.발음듣기

To finish here, we've now discussed three dimensions of meaning.발음듣기

There's conventional truth conditional meaning which is very close to the literal meaning of what is said.발음듣기

There's also the non-conventional implied meaning, which would be conversational implicature, and which is potentially quite far from the literal meaning of what is said.발음듣기

And finally, there's conventional non-truth conditional meaning, which would be the conventional implicature that we just discussed.발음듣기

So there we have, in short, an introduction to three different dimensions of linguistic meaning, a set of distinctions which is very useful in fields like philosophy and linguistics, or really in any field in which it's necessary to understand the relation between language and how we use language to communicate. Thank you.발음듣기

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