| Reviews |
| - 'a virtuosic blend of astute descriptive observations and technically sophisticated formulations,' - Kent Bach, Journal of Linguistics
- 'The Logic of Conventional Implicatures, by Christopher Potts, which I consider one of the highlights of 2005, presents an ingenious new theory for describing the semantic interpretation of sentences that are said to contain 'conventional implicatures' (CIs).' - The Year's Work in English Studies
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| Description | | - "No one who aims to keep abreast of semantics, pragmatics, syntax, philosophy of language, or applications of logic to natural language can afford to overlook this impressive contribution to the linguistics literature." OUP referee
- Develops a new theory of how conventional implicatures should be handled in the compositional semantics
- "Chris Potts's book is a milestone in our understanding of the way that syntax and pragmatics interface with each other." David Adger
| | This book revives the study of conventional implicatures in natural language semantics. H. Paul Grice first defined the concept. Since then his definition has seen much use and many redefinitions, but it has never enjoyed a stable place in linguistic theory. Christopher Potts returns to the original and uses it as a key into two presently under-studied areas of natural language: supplements
(appositives, parentheticals) and expressives (e.g., honorifics, epithets). The account of both depends on a theory in which sentence meanings can be multidimensional. The theory is logically and intuitively compositional, and it minimally extends a familiar kind of intensional logic, thereby providing an adaptable, highly useful tool for semantic analysis. The result is a linguistic theory that
is accessible not only to linguists of all stripes, but also philosophers of language, logicians, and computer scientists who have linguistic applications in mind. |
Readership: Scholars and advanced students of semantics, pragmatics, syntax, and their interfaces; philosophers of language and logicians; computer scientists interested in natural language analysis and applications.
| Contents |
1.
Introduction
2.
A Preliminary Case for Conventional Implicatures
3.
A Logic for Conventional Implicatures
4.
Supplements
5.
Expressive Content
6.
The Supplement Relation: A Syntactic Analysis
7.
A Look Outside Grice's Definition
Appendix
Bibliography
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| Authors, editors,
and contributors |
Christopher Potts, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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