Lexical Pragmatics - Journal of Semantics

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148 Lexical Pragmaticsproposition B. For example, if we strengthen eg by adding ->B (as in (30), Swill be pragmatically anomalous in the new context. This shows that on thecurrent account cancellability is not a necessary feature of conversationalimplicature; some implicatures may be non-cancellable. The Hobbs-Stickelapproach, on the other hand, is in agreement with the standard view(resting on the highly defeasible notion of minimal explanation).The usefulness of cancellation as a test for conversational implicature hasbeen challenged in connection with the thesis 4 of section 3.2. The presentaccount of conversational implicature suggests that a proper treatment ofconversational implicature may explain when an implicature is cancellableand when not. The next subsection provides an analysis of the pragmatics ofadjectives that gives further evidence for this view.4.2 Abduction and the pragmatics of adjectivesOne part of speech is especially suited to demonstrating the phenomenon ofsemantic underspecification: the adjective. In section 2.1 we considered thefree variable view as an especially promising account of treating the meaningof adjectives. It had been stressed that the specification of free variables isnecessary for a full interpretation of an utterance. I will now demonstratehow the current theory yields an appropriate mechanism of (contextual)specification by applying it to the kind of examples discussed by Quine(i960) and Lahav (1993) (cf. section 2.1).(32) (a) The apple is red(b) Its peel is red(c) Its pulp is red(d) APPLE(d) A PART(d,x) A COLOUR(x,u) A u = red(e) APPLE(d) A PART(d,x) A PEEL(x) A COLOUR(x,u) A u = redMy claim is that (32b) but not (32c) can be construed as a conversationalimplicature of (32a). Input of the analysis is the underspecified semanticrepresentation given in (32d). One of the abductive specifications of thissemantic input specifies x as the peel part of the apple (see (32c)). For thecalculation of the corresponding costs we start with assumption costs asgiven in the first line of (3 3). Note that we take the assumption cost forthe 'slots' PART(d.x) and COLOUR(x,u) as negligible with regard to thecosts of the more 'specific' elements of the representation. 17 This contrastswith corresponding stipulations by Hobbs et al. (1993) but it agrees withthe general picture that specificity is the primary determinator of theassumption costs. Furthermore, we refer to axioms of the formareq
Reinhard Blutner 149certain conditional probabilities: u>, oc prob(q|pi) (cf. Hobbs et al. 1993). Ifthe pi are necessary conditions for q, then we have u, + u> 2 = i, and theweights U{ can be interpreted to estimate the saliences of the featurecomplexes p; with regard to p.(33) APPLE(d) $1 APART(d,x) $0 A C0L0UR(x,u) S0 Au = red 11APPLE(d)
Page 7 and 8: Reinhard Blutner 121(c) a fast book
Page 9: Reinhard Blutner 123not necessarily
Page 12: 126 Lexical Pragmaticsmeaning that
Page 15 and 16: Reinhard Blutner 129grasp intuitive
Page 18 and 19: 132 Lexical Pragmaticspr(m|sem(a))
Page 20 and 21: 134 Lexical Pragmaticsthe propositi
Page 22 and 23: 136 Lexical Pragmaticsprocesses and
Page 24 and 25: 138 Lexical Pragmaticsand a! that a
Page 26 and 27: 140 Lexical PragmaticsI have tried
Page 28 and 29: 142 Lexical Pragmaticsagainst the c
Page 30 and 31: 144 Lexical Pragmatics4.1 Cost-base
Page 32 and 33: 146 Lexical PragmaticsSince we have
Page 36 and 37: 150 Lexical Pragmatics(3$) (a) The
Page 38 and 39: 152 Lexical PragmaticsThis utteranc
Page 40 and 41: 154 Lexical Pragmatics(45) (a) 3e[S
Page 42 and 43: 156 Lexical Pragmaticson the way ho
Page 44 and 45: 158 Lexical PragmaticsNOTES1 I have
Page 46 and 47: i6o Lexical PragmaticsREFERENCESAls
Page 48: 162 Lexical PragmaticsPustejovsky,

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