What is said, what is implicated, what is implicated

Abstract

The present paper, which takes Bach’s (1994) distinction between ‘what is said’, ‘implicature’, and ‘impliciture’ as a starting point, shows that Grice’s tests of non-detachability and cancellability are able to clarify the distinction among different elements of utterance meaning that are pragmatically determined. We establish that conversational implicature is cancellable and detachable.By using examples, we emphasize the difference between what is explicitly said and what goes implicit in what is said.

Keywords

• impliciture
• implicature
• cancellability
• explicit
• implicit