IMPLICATURE AND SEMANTIC CHANGE

Kate Kearns University of Canterbury September 2000

(To appear under the title 'Implicature and change' in Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert & Chris Bulcaen eds. Handbook of 2000, John Benjamins.)

1. INTRODUCTION

The basic components of semantic change are the two processes represented in (1).

(1) a. Fa > Fab Form F with sense a acquires an additional sense b b. Fab > Fb Form F with senses a and b loses sense a

Process (b) must operate on a polysemous form. If we assume that polysemy must arise by process (a), process (b) is dependent on process (a), but not vice versa. Accordingly, the process of sense gain (as in (a)) is the sine qua non of semantic change.

This paper reviews proposals that in some semantic changes, implicature is the mechanism by which sense b initially comes to be associated with Fa. The establishment of b as a sense of F is attributed to conventionalization of the implicature.

The notion of implicature is not precisely defined, and may be compared to a concept with prototypical and peripheral instances. A prototypical implicature is a particularized conversational implicature as first proposed by Grice (1975), in which the implicature is intended by the speaker, dependent on the particular context of utterance, and calculated by identifiable inferential steps, including certain communicative principles as premisses -- in Grice's theory, the and its constitutive maxims, most importantly the maxims of Quantity and Relation. (Implicatures calculated under Quantity and Relation are discussed in more detail below.) Implicatures of this kind, though differently classified, remain important in post-Gricean and Neo-Gricean theories of communication.

Grice also identified the more peripheral class of conventional implicatures, non-truth conditional inferences which attach to particular words by convention. A conventional implicature is not calculated or inferred under the Cooperative Principle and maxims, and being attached to an expression by convention, cannot be detached from it. If an expression E carries a conventional implicature I, any use of E will carry I, but if the utterance can be paraphrased without E, I will not be present. Grice's example of this is the connective but, which he describes as an expression of conjunction carrying a conventional implicature of some sort of contrast between the two conjuncts, making their conjunction unexpected. The implicature of but, illustrated in 'She was poor but honest', disappears in a paraphrase without but as in 'She was poor and honest'. In short, a conventional implicature is noncalculable and detachable. A conversational implicature, on the other hand, is detachable because (Manner implicatures aside) it

- 1 - arises from the sense of an utterance and not from its form. Any good paraphrase of an utterance with conversational implicature I will still carry I.

This contrast presents an apparent tension for canonical conversational implicature as the mechanism underlying a sense gain Fa > Fab. Conventional implicature is attached to a form, but it does not arise, being simply attached to the form as a listed property, corresponding only to the stage Fab. A conversational implicature arises but is not regularly attached to a particular form, giving only the process a > ab.

Bridging the divide between conventional implicature and particularized conversational implicature, and presenting as a candidate for the mechanism underlying Fa > Fab, is Grice's generalized conversational implicature. Generalized conversational implicature is calculated under the Cooperative Principle, and thus arises. In addition, it is relatively independent of particular utterance contexts by virtue of being fairly regularly attached to particular expressions, as in, for example, Horn's (1984) account of involving expressions of quantity or degree ranked on a scale of informational strength.

The identification of conversational implicature along Gricean lines as the central prototype is consistent with the emphasis generally placed on this kind of implicature in the literature. But as Levinson (1983: 127) points out, "Grice in fact intended the term implicature to be a general cover term, to stand in contrast to what is said or expressed by the truth conditions of expressions, and to include all the kinds of pragmatic (non-truth-conditional) inference discernible." Understanding implicature in this broader sense shifts the focus away from the implicating speaker and towards any means at all by which the hearer may draw inferences, whether or not they are primarily grounded in communicative strategies. Here implicature may be taken to include cognitively-based inferences, arising out of the structure of lexical concepts.

The next section reviews selected analyses in which particular conversational principles are cited in instances of generalized conversational implicature initiating semantic change. Distinguishing implicature and metaphor in processes of change is addressed in section 3, and the notion of implicature emerging from this discussion is clarified in section 4. Section 5 outlines semantic change triggered by inferences stemming from lexical concepts, and a proposal for resolving the apparent conflict between metaphor and implicature.

2. ANALYSES CITING CONVERSATIONAL PRINCIPLES

Specific analyses of conversational implicature in semantic change appeal not to Grice's original four maxims, but to the NeoGricean theories of Horn (1984) and Atlas & Levinson (1981), which are briefly outlined here.

Grice's (1975: 45) Maxim of Quantity has two clauses with opposing effects: Clause 1 'Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)', and Clause 2 'Do not make your contribution more informative than is required'.

- 2 - Horn compares this opposition to the general opposing forces in natural systems which produce a balance between economy of effort and efficiency of output. He proposes two principles in replacement of Grice's four: the Q Principle 'Make your contribution sufficient', corresponding to Clause 1 of Grice's Quantity maxim, and the R Principle 'Make your contribution necessary', corresponding to Clause 2 of Grice's Quantity maxim combined with Grice's maxim of Relation or Relevance, 'Be relevant' (Grice 1975: 46). Horn writes (1984: 14) "A speaker who says '... p ...' may license the Q-inference that he meant '... at most p ...'; a speaker who says '... p ...' may license the R-inference that he meant '... more than p ...'." An example of Q-inference is the inference from 'It is possible that p' to 'It is not likely or certain that p'. An example of R-inference is the inference from 'She was able to solve the problem' to 'She solved the problem'. Generally the analyses reviewed here cite R-implicature.

Horn follows Grice in formulating his principles as guides to the speaker. Atlas & Levinson's Principle of Informativeness is more directly focussed on the hearer's interpretive calculation, assuming that 'it is .. a basic intuition that the information an utterance gives an addressee depends in part on what he already knows, believes, presumes, or takes for granted, in short, on what is normally left unsaid' (1981: 40). The hearer will understand an utterance by way of an inference to the best interpretation, which according to the Principle of Informativeness is 'the most informative among the competing interpretations that is consistent with the common ground' (1981: 41), and " best 'fits' ... the communicative intentions attributable to the speaker in light of 'what he has said' " (1981: 42).

Both Horn's R Principle and Atlas & Levinson's Principle of Informativeness license inferences towards a more specific or more informative interpretation than the literal content of the utterance. Both theories also emphasise the role in interpretive elaboration of general background assumptions, including normative scripts and stereotypes. As Atlas & Levinson note, 'temporal, causal and teleological relations between events are stereotypical in our 'common sense' conceptual scheme' (1981: 42).

A well-known example of semantic change by implicature is the development of causal meaning from purely temporal meaning with connectives such as since and while. Geis & Zwicky (1971) offer the examples in (2) as illustrations of the common inference from temporal sequence to cause. In each case, although the literal sense of the sentence expresses only temporal sequence (or overlap in (2c)), there is a clear inference that the first event causes the second.

(2) a. After a large meal, we slept soundly. b. Having finished the manuscript, she fell into a swoon. c. Martha observed the children at play and smiled with pleasure.

The emergence of causal since, as in 'Since I will be out of town tomorrow, I can't use these theatre tickets', is attributed to the causal inference becoming a standard sense of since. Geis & Zwicky do not class inferences of this kind, identified as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, as conversational implicature in Grice's theory. However, Traugott & König (1991) attribute this inference to the Principle of Informativeness, given that it creates an increase in informativeness. It can also be seen to draw on

- 3 - stereotypical temporal and causal relations in our conceptual schema, according to Atlas & Levinson's comment cited above.

The inference of causation is not confined to sequence, but also occurs with temporal overlap, as Traugott & König point out with the examples in (3) (their (7), 1981: 197).

(3) a. I couldn't work when the television was on. b. I can't sleep now that I am alone.

The conjunction while, originally OE tha hwile the 'at the time that', expressed temporal simultaneity. Developing into the late OE conjunction wile, it attracted inferences of causation, as in (4), taken from Hopper & Traugott (1993: 85).

(4) Thar mycht succed na female, Quhill foundyn mycht be ony male. 'No female was able to succeed while any male could be found.' (1375, Barbours Bruce 1.60 [OED while 2a]

The causal inference with while did not become a standard sense in English, but full semantic changes of the kind are found in the examples in (5), from Traugott & König (1981: 197).

(5) OHG dia wila so 'so long as' > German weil 'because' Latin dum 'when, as long as, because' French quand 'when, because' Finnish kun 'when, while, as, since, because' Estonian kuna 'while, as, since, because'

Further semantic changes attributed to informativeness-augmenting inferences include the development of concessives, and various meaning shifts which may be broadly classed as increases in expressed subjectivity.

Traugott & König discuss the concessive expressions in (6) (their (12), 1991: 199), which originated as expressions of simultaneity, concomitance or similarity.

(6) a. connectives originally expressing simultaneity or temporal overlap: while, still, yet; German zugleich, indes(sen), dennoch; French cependant; Turkish iken 'while', 'although'; Indonesian sekali-pun 'although' (< 'at the same time'+'even'); Hawaiian oiai 'while', 'meanwhile', 'although'; Japanese nagara 'while', 'although' b. connectives originally expressing simple cooccurrence or concomitance, or even similarity: EME withal (< 'along with the rest'), all/just the same; German gleichwohl, bei all; Danish evenwel; Rumanian cu toate ca 'with all (things) that'; Turkish bununla beraber 'together with this'; Hopi naama-hin 'although' (< 'together'+'thus'); Quileute -t'e 'with', 'although' c. negation of asymmetry (e.g. negation of opposition, negation of negative correlation): notwithstanding, nevertheless, nonetheless; French n'empeche que; German nichtsdestoweniger

- 4 - The development of a concessive inference with these expressions, subsequently an established sense, is attributed to the need to establish the relevance of the stated relation to the communication, given that the simple cooccurrence or concomitance of two situations is generally not worthy of remark. Such cooccurrence is, however, worth noting where it conflicts with normative assumptions about what kinds of situations naturally cooccur, as in Traugott & König's example 'He can play the Beethoven sonatas and he is only seven years old', where the concessive inference is clear: 'Even though he is only seven years old, he can play the Beethoven sonatas'.

Although Traugott & König (1991) class the negative concessives in (6c) with the others (as a kind of double negation being tantamount to a positive), König (1985: 276) indicates the likely involvement of the general pragmatics of negation: 'It is a well-known fact that negatives are only uttered in a context where corresponding affirmatives have already been discussed, or else where the speaker assumes the hearer's belief in -- and thus familiarity with -- the corresponding affirmative'. Citing the Maxim of Quantity, König argues that, for example, an assertion of 'p n'empeche que q' with the French connective n'empeche que, literally 'not preventing', is not informative without the additional inference 'if p then normally not-q'. That is, the assertion that p does not prevent q is not informative unless we assume that p normally would prevent q, so assuming that the utterance is adequately informative, we infer (or perhaps accommodate the ) that p normally prevents q.

Horn (1989: 201) suggests a similar development for negation in general. He writes: The extra implicature associated with negation [roughly 'not p' implicates 'one might believe or might have believed that p'] does indeed derive from the prototype situation in which a negative statement is less informative -- often infinitely less informative, as in My favorite number is not 5 -- than its affirmative basis or common ground. [...] But the markedness of negation, born in the pure pragmatics of conversational implicature, may tend to become partly conventionalized, with the result that all negative statements [...] are affected [...] by this implicature.

Traugott (1989) presents a range of instances of semantic change which she identifies as increases in expressed subjectivity, stemming from an informativeness- strengthening inference, including developments in the English modals shall, must and will, verbs such as insist and suggest, and adverbs such as probably, apparently and evidently.

It is generally accepted that the epistemic meanings (that is, concerning knowledge, belief and certainty) of must, shall (should) and will, illustrated in (7a-c) below, are later developments from earlier meanings, deontic (that is, concerning obligation and permission) for must and shall and future for will, illustrated in (7d-f).

(7) a. The house must be haunted. 'The house is certainly haunted' b. They should be home by now. 'They are probably home by now' c. That will be our train on platform C. 'That is sure to be our train on platform C'

- 5 - d. He must return at once. 'He is required to return at once - He is forbidden to not return at once' e. He should return at once. 'Accepted custom or authority strongly recommends that he return at once' f. He will return at once. 'His immediate return is predicted'

The shift to epistemic meanings is taken to show an increase in expressed subjectivity because epistemics are concerned with knowledge and belief states, and with first person uses, the beliefs and conclusions of the speaker. In addition, the epistemic meanings of these verbs first emerged as weakly subjective, expressing general probability and certainty, acquiring more strongly subjective uses over time, expressing the speaker's own assessment of probability or certainty. For example, will and would expressing 'I conclude that ..', as illustrated in (8), did not appear in standard English until the nineteenth century, and is still uncommon in American English.

(8) a. 1847 Ch. Brontë, Jane Eyre XI: This will be your luggage, I suppose.

b. 1857 Mrs Gaskell. Life of Ch. Brontë I IV 79: 'Of the younger ones .. I have very slight recollections, save that one, a darling child, under five years of age, was quite the pet nursling of the school. This would be Emily' [i.e. this must have been Emily]. (Traugott 1989: 43, (28), (29))

Concerning speech act verbs such as insist and suggest, Traugott discusses developments from directive meanings, comparable to deontic modality, to assertive meanings, comparable to epistemic modality. Directive and assertive meanings are illustrated in (9) (Traugott 1989: 44).

(9) a. I insist that he cheat in the exam tomorrow. directive b. I insist that he cheats, and has done so all semester. assertive

A similar development from permission to acknowledgment of a fact is shown for allow in (10).

(10) I allow them to use the lower path as a shortcut. permission I allow that the committee was not briefed on this point. acknowledgment

In these developments, Traugott argues that the (later) assertive meaning is in a sense epistemic and subjective, illustrating a 'shift to meanings expressing the speaker's belief state or attitude toward the proposition' (1989: 44). I note in passing that Traugott does not comment on the contribution of the first person subject to this distinction: the directive/assertive contrast is also found in (11) below, but with a third person subject (11b) does not express speaker attitude, and presumably cannot be considered subjective.

(11) a. He insists that she cheat in the exam tomorrow.

- 6 - b. He insists that she cheats and has done so all semester.

Traugott also discusses the development of epistemic meanings for adverbs such as possibly, probably, evidently, apparently and obviously, all originating as adverbs of manner modifying the verb. As with the epistemic modals, the epistemic meanings of these adverbs were first only weakly subjective, later developing uses as clear expressions of speaker attitude. Examples of weak and strong subjectivity in epistemic evidently and apparently are given in (12) from Traugott (1989: 47).

(12) a. 1690 Locke, Hum. Und. II. xxix: No Idea, therefore, can be undistinguishable from another .. for from all other, it is evidently different ('evident to all', weak subjective epistemic) (OED) 20th C?: He is evidently right (in the meaning 'I conclude that he is right'; strong subjective epistemic inviting the inference of some concession or doubt on speaker's part). b. 1566 Knox Hist. Ref. Wks 1846 I 49: The Bischoppis .. hes had heirtofoir sick authoritie upoun they subjectis, that appearandly thei war rather King, and thow the subject. 'The Bishops have heretofore had such authority over your subjects that to all appearances they rather [than you] were the king and you the subject.' (OED) 1846 J. Ryland, Foster's Life II 107: It has been remarked, and apparently with truth (= 'I think, but do not vouch for it') (OED)

Observing that these developments increase 'coding of speaker informativeness about his or her attitude' (ibid: 49), Traugott attributes the changes to the conventionalization of implicatures which strengthen relevance and informativeness, according to the Principle of Relevance in Sperber & Wilson's (1986) , Atlas & Levinson's Principle of Informativeness, or Horn's R Principle.

In the analyses above, Horn's R Principle is cited as underlying conversational implicature. Horn (1984) also claims that both the Q and R Principles play a part in the semantic changes traditionally termed broadening and narrowing. It is not clear, however, whether or not Horn considers these to be implicatures, as the Q and R principles in his system are overarching principles operating on language globally, and not confined to implicature. Horn states that the tension between the Q and R principles affects a wide range of phenomena, 'ranging from implicature and politeness strategies to the interpretation of and gaps, from lexical change to indirect speech acts, from the interpretation of case marking in so-called split ergative to the analysis of recorded conversational interaction, from the pragmatic strengthening of apparent contradictory negation to the weakening effect of "logical" double negation' (1989: 194). This passage suggests that Horn himself might not include lexical change under implicature, even though his theory of the Q and R principles is well known as a development of Grice's theory of implicature. With this proviso, I include here a brief account of Horn's remarks on narrowing and broadening.

Horn suggests that narrowing 'generally involves an R-based shift from a set denotation to a subset (or member) of that set, representing the salient or stereotypical examplar of the general category' (1984: 32). The shift may be complete, as in Greek

- 7 - alogon 'speechless one' > 'horse', Latin fenum 'produce' > 'hay', poison cognate with potion, undertaker 'one who undertakes' > 'mortician', and corn, used for the main grain crop of the region, viz. wheat in England, oats in Scotland and maize in Australia and the New World.

Alternatively, the original meaning may survive in contrast with the new narrower meaning, presenting a pattern of autohyponymy -- the new sense of a term is a hyponym of the original, more general sense. Horn's examples of this include color for 'hue' excluding black, white and grey, as in color TV, temperature for 'fever', number for 'integer', and drink for 'drink alcohol' as in 'I don't drink'. All these are classed as originally R-based inferences from a set to a salient or stereotypical subset.

Lexical narrowing leading to autohyponymy may also be Q-based. Here Horn cites Kempson's (1980) discussion of the characteristic input structure, in which a general term has a basic-level hyponym naming only one part of a two-part division of the general term's extension: for example, the species term dog has the hyponym bitch 'female dog', but no basic lexeme denoting male dogs. In a context where information on gender would be relevant, use of the general term dog constitutes an avoidance of the more informative term bitch, licensing the Q-inference 'not female' and thus the interpretation of dog as 'male dog'. Horn's examples of Q-based narrowing, where a general term is understood in contrast with its one existing basic hyponym, include cow excluding bulls, rectangle excluding squares, finger excluding thumbs, and gay excluding lesbian.

Horn proposes that lexical broadening, shifting from a set to a superset, is always R- based. Examples include Latin pecunia 'property or wealth in cattle' (cf. pecu 'livestock, cattle') > 'wealth' > 'money', the cognate Old English feoh 'cattle' > 'property' (cf. Modern English fee), Latin adripare, arripare 'come to shore' > French arriver 'arrive', and Latin panarium 'breadbasket' > French panier 'basket'. Under R- based broadening fall the generic uses of terms originating as names, such as xerox 'photocopy', vaseline 'petroleum jelly', hoover 'vacuum cleaner' and kleenex 'paper tissue'.

Conversational implicature is also considered to be involved in a number of developments in tense and aspect. A well-known example is the development of modal will 'want, be willing' > 'intend' > 'prediction of future event'. As Aijmer (1985: 13) writes of the first person use, 'If the speaker [of "I will"] is willing to do something, it follows conversationally that he intends to do it and that the future action will take place'. The development of will is also traced in Bybee & Pagliuca (1987), along with a similar development for shall 'owe' > 'be right, commanded or decreed' > 'intention' (with first person) > 'prediction'. They write 'A statement of obligation by a first person subject amounts to a promise to carry out the act, and, by implication, a statement of intention, ... By the Middle English period, shall in first person expressions of intention ... has become common, and approaches the sense of prediction' (Bybee & Pagliuca 1987: 14).

Inferential changes are also at work in the development of perfectives and anteriors with change of state predicates into predications of present states. The Kanuri examples in (13) are taken from Bybee et al. (1994: 288).

- 8 - (13) Perfect suffix -nà with dynamic predicates: Módù is↔nà 'Modu has arrived' Shíà rúk↔nà 'I have seen him'

with change of state predicates: Nòng↔nà 'I know' Ríng↔nà 'I am afraid' G↔rgáz↔nà 'S/he is angry'

The anterior of a change of state verb implies that the final state now holds, and the hearer may infer that the present state is the main point of the communication, as in 'The fruit has ripened' implicating 'The fruit is now ripe and ready to eat'.

3. IMPLICATURE AND METAPHOR

Much of the discussion of implicature in semantic change has been in the context of research on processes of grammaticalization. Many of the semantic changes attributed to implicature are part of grammaticalization processes, and a central issue in the discussion has been the demarcation of domains of operation for implicature and metaphor, long known to be a major mechanism in semantic change.

I note that a distinction between the two presupposes that metaphor is not included in implicature, although an inferential basis for the interpretation of metaphor is assumed by Grice, who proposes that metaphor is interpreted as a recognized flouting of the Maxim of Quality/Truthfulness. Relevance Theory also analyses metaphor as interpreted by conversational inference, and Warren (1992: 74) notes that to understand a metaphor correctly the hearer must infer, commonly from context, the grounds of comparison between the literal and novel referents of the metaphorical expression.

Implicature, then, is not to be so broadly construed as to include any inferred content, but only inferences of certain kinds. The main criterion for distinguishing implicature and metaphor recalls Grice's characterization of metaphor as a flouting of the Maxim of Quality. If I say of a bibliophile at a book market 'Leave him be -- he's a pig in mud', the metaphorical interpretation 'blissfully content' is not simply added, but substituted for the literal content of pig in mud, which is false in this instance. Generally, an expression in a given utterance is intended either in its literal sense or in its metaphorical sense, but not both.

In contrast, a conversational implicature is added to the literal content of the utterance and both senses are intended together. Calculation of the implicature depends on the assumption that the literal sense is also intended and offered as true (with the exception in Grice's theory and Relevance Theory of irony and metaphor). It follows from this that if a semantic change is to be attributed to implicature, there must be a stage in which the original meaning and the new meaning are both present in the same contexts.

This point is raised by Bybee et al. (1994: 200), arguing that the deontic to epistemic developments of must and should came about by different mechanisms. They point

- 9 - out that should can have both deontic and epistemic readings in combination with verb phrases interpreted as having past, present or future time reference, as in (14).

(14) a. The letter should arrive sometime next week. b. The letter should be in the mail. c. The letter should have come last week.

This supports the view that deontic should gave rise to epistemic should by implicature. The proposed inference is plausible -- with (14c), for example, if we know that the sender was obliged to have the letter arrive last week, unless we know otherwise we may infer that the letter probably arrived last week.

They argue that epistemic and deontic must, on the other hand, are in almost mutually exclusive environments, assigning deontic must to future environments and epistemic must to present and past environments, with the examples in (15) .

(15) a. The letter must arrive sometime next week. b. The letter must be in the mail. c. The letter must have been in the mail.

(15c) can only be interpreted as past and has only an epistemic reading.

Bybee et al. claim that (15a) has only a deontic reading ('The sender is obliged to ensure that the letter arrives next week'), but I note that an epistemic reading 'I conclude that the letter will arrive next week' may be available here, as also in 'That tree must fall soon -- it's badly diseased'. I note also that a deontic to epistemic inference appears to be available for (15a): from 'Someone is obliged to have the letter arrive next week' one may infer 'The letter will arrive next week'. The inferred certainty here is epistemic, not predictive, as the future interpretation comes from the adverbial (next week, soon) and is shared by both senses of must.

The contrast in (15b), on the other hand, without a future-denoting adverbial, is sharp. The deontic reading can only be future 'Whoever posts the letter is obliged to have it in the mail at some future time', while the epistemic reading is present time 'The letter is surely in the mail'. Where deontic must triggers a futurative interpretation, as in (15b), the likely inference is predictive rather than epistemic. This point is noted by Traugott & König (1991: 209) for 'She must be married', from which one may infer 'She will be married'. Traugott & König identify this inference as epistemic, but it is more accurately an inference to prediction, as must is here the source of futurity. The epistemic sense 'I conclude that she is married' cannot be inferred from 'She must be married' understood as 'She is obliged to get married'.

I note that the two senses of must also overlap in generic contexts such as 'The floors must be washed thoroughly every day', and again the deontic sense may imply the epistemic: if one knows that daily floor washing is required, one may infer that it is carried out.

Although the claim that deontic and epistemic must have mutually exclusive environments is too strong, these examples do support the claimed correlation between shared context and plausibility of inference. Where both deontic and

- 10 - epistemic senses of must share a temporal context, future or present generic, the deontic to epistemic inference is available. But where the temporal contexts diverge, and deontic must itself is the source of futurity, the main inference is predictive rather than epistemic.

The criterion of cooccurring senses raises another point concerning a number of the examples mentioned above. Original senses commonly persist alongside later senses. True polysemy is established when the later sense can occur in a context that excludes the original sense, as demonstrated for since by Traugott & König (1991: 194) with the examples in (16).

(16) a. I have done quite a bit of writing since we last met. (temporal) b. Since Susan left him, John has been very miserable. (temporal, causal) c. Since you are not coming with me, I will have to go alone. (causal)

If the independent use of the later sense cannot be demonstrated, it may be that the new sense is not a fully established sense of the form, but has stabilized as a generalized implicature reliably attached to the form. This indeterminacy appears with concessive while, as in (17).

(17) While I understand your difficulties, I cannot help you.

Although the concessive meaning is the main contribution of while in (17), the original meaning of cooccurrence of situations is still present. In short, the persistence of co-distribution of interpretations not only indicates that the later interpretation originated as an implicature, but also suggests that it continues to have that status.

4. IMPLICATURE, METONYMY AND MERGER

The criterion of shared contexts discussed above is proposed as a test for the presence of implicature in general, but strictly speaking it identifies a particular kind of implicature. As noted earlier, pragmatic theory gives inference a role in the interpretation of figures of speech, including both metaphor and metonymy. Both of these are inferentially interpreted, working from the premiss that what the speaker meant is not what she literally said, and the convention of truthfulness has been purposefully violated. The inferred figurative sense is substituted for the literal sense of a .

A more precise (and autohyponymous) sense of implicature has emerged in the discussion on change, focussed on those implicatures which involve sense addition rather than sense substitution. This class of implicatures is identified by the criterion of shared contexts, influenced by Coates' (1983) distinction between ambiguity and merger. Where Fab represents ambiguity (or polysemy), senses a and b occur in different contexts, but in a merger, a and b occur together in the same contexts. Conversely, where Fab is recognized as a merger, the change is likely to be attributed to implicature under the R Principle or the Principle of Informativeness primarily on the grounds that information has been added, rather than by identifying the calculation of the inference.

- 11 - As indicated above, metonymy and metaphor are both instances of ambiguity, not merger, and so metonymy does not belong with the narrower class of implicatures identified here.

A rather different view is proposed by Traugott & König (1991: 201-3), who outline a distinction between metaphor and implicature based on sense relations. A metaphorical relation is comparative and analogic, based on a perceived similarity between the structures of the original concept and the novel concept, which is typically more abstract. For example, terms denoting body parts frequently develop into terms for spatial regions and relations, as in Yucatec pàach 'back' (body part) > 'behind', táan 'front' (body part) > 'in front of', and ts'u' 'marrow' > 'in' (from Heine 1997: 37).

Implicature (narrowly construed), on the other hand, is based on non-comparative association, likened by Traugott & König (ibid: 210-3) to metonymy. Metonymy is based on perceived or typical contiguity of the old and new referents. Central examples are based on physical contiguity, as in Latin coxa 'hip' > French cuisse 'thigh', or Stern's (1931) famous example of bede 'prayer' > bead, based on the practice of counting the prayers of the rosary by counting the beads which represent them. Metonymy may also be cited for instances of contiguity in the linguistic context, as in French ne .. pas 'not a step' > pas 'not', where negative meaning has transferred to pas from its construction mate ne.

Traugott & König (1991: 210-3) propose that implicature is a kind of metonymy in that the implicated meaning of an utterance is associated with the literal meaning by being covertly present in the discourse context. The mechanism of implicature signals the association or contiguity between the two meanings. Adopting the same proposal, Hopper & Traugott (1993: 81) write, 'we use the term [metonymy] in the restrictive sense of conceptual association. This sense can be found in Stern, who, in speaking of "permutation", says it results from 'a word [being] used in a phrase where a notion in some way connected with its meaning is liable to form an element of the context' (1931: 353).'

As stated above, implicature broadly construed includes both metaphor and metonymy, and on the narrow construal of implicature based on the criterion of shared contexts, sensitive to merger, both metaphor and metonymy are excluded. On this view, contra Traugott & König, implicature is not subsumed under metonymy. Rather, the relation between them discussed in Traugott & König is one of analogy.

5. INFERENCES BASED ON LEXICAL CONCEPTS

Conversational implicature is also appealed to in work by Bernd Heine and his associates on semantic changes which they attribute to inferences which highlight or select in certain contexts particular components of a word sense or lexical concept. Several authors (see, for example, Lipka (1985), Geeraerts (1997) and references cited there) provide comparable accounts of semantic change by shifts in the status of elements of a lexical prototype, although these analyses are not generally framed in terms of conversational implicature. As originally peripheral features become central

- 12 - and the originally prototypical features become marginal, the meaning of a word gradually changes.

Heine et al. (1991) to some extent adopt Traugott & König's comparison between implicature and metonymy. They construct a model of semantic change in grammaticalization in which the relation between metaphor and context-induced inference (identified as a kind of implicature) echoes a previously established relation between metaphor and metonymy.

Although metonymy and metaphor are based on distinct sense relations, many metaphorical transfers can be seen to originate in metonymy. Taylor (1989), for example, points out that the MORE = UP metaphor may have a metonymic basis in the image of piling objects in a heap: as more items are added the top of the heap rises. The transfer becomes fully metaphorical when it applies in domains where the metonymic link is excluded, as in 'Prices are rising'.

Heine et al. discuss a number of semantic changes showing the same pattern -- accumulated shifts in meaning, initially inferential, may emerge as metaphorical shifts when they cross conceptual domain boundaries. This is illustrated here with the development of the Ewe noun ví '(human) child' into a suffix with various senses in different contexts. The cognitive concept CHILD contains, among others, the features YOUNG, SMALL, and DESCENDANT OF, each of which may be the most salient content of the word child in different contexts of use, as illustrated in (18).

(18) a. If he was born in 1905, then he was still a child when the war began. YOUNG b. This is a child's cello. SMALL c. She is their only child. DESCENDANT OF

The Ewe examples below, taken from Heine et al. (1991: Chapter 3), show how these inferrable peripheral senses give rise to new conventional meanings in particular contexts of compounding or affixation.

(19) YOUNG Νútsu 'man' Νútsu-ví 'boy' ny•nu 'woman' ny nu-ví 'girl' nyi 'cow' nyi-ví 'calf' detí 'oilpalm tree' detí-ví 'young oilpalm tree' YOUNG > INEXPERIENCED núfíálá 'teacher' núfíálá-ví 'one who has just started teaching' INEXPERIENCED > APPRENTICE d y lá 'healer' d y lá-ví 'assistant or apprentice to healer' APPRENTICE > UNQUALIFIED Βúkulá 'driver' Βúkulá-ví 'driver who has not passed license test' UNQUALIFIED > UNSUCCESSFUL, WANNABE kesin t 'rich person' kesin t -ví 'parvenu; person who is not really rich' SMALL

- 13 - x 'house' x-ví 'small house, hut' lā 'animal' lā-ví 'small animal species' akpa 'fish' akpa-ví 'small fish species' SMALL > WEAK, INSIGNIFICANT gbe 'voice' gbe-ví 'weak, faint voice' ya 'wind' ya-ví 'light wind, breeze' SMALL > COMPONENT, PART OF núnono 'drinking' núnono-ví 'mouthful of liquid'

Chains of meaning shifts such as 'child' > 'young' > 'inexperienced' > 'apprentice' > 'unqualified' > 'unsuccessful' and 'child' > 'small' > 'component, part of' are composed of small inferential steps plausibly attributed to implicature. They can be classed as metonymic inferences, so long as properties shared by a conceptual entity, or elements coocurring in a conceptual schema, can be classed as contiguous.1 Such shifts also appear to be metonymic in that sense substitution is involved - for example, the -ví suffix meaning 'young' or 'small' is not required to denote a human, unlike the original word. Heine et al. identify the individual steps in the chain as metonymic, but apparently on the grounds, adopted from Traugott & König, that implicature is metonymic, and not on the grounds of substitution of contiguous senses. More distant links in a chain such as 'child':'unqualified' or 'child':'component, part of' appear to be analogically related and taken in isolation, present as metaphors. Accordingly, Heine et al. propose that implicature/inference and metonymy operate at the microlevel of change, producing over time what they term 'emerging metaphors' at the macrolevel.

Given that sense substitution occurs in these changes, and that the different senses of suffix -ví are particular to different contexts, these inferences are not in the merger class of implicatures discussed above. These data demonstrate the importance of metonymic inferences at the initiation of semantic change in certain areas, along with merger inferences, and in contrast to metaphorical inferences.

The general pattern of emerging metaphor may be present in other well-known changes attributable to inference. For example, the periphrastic future be going to may set up prediction by implicature. In 'They are going to sell their wares at the market', the motion sense 'They are on their way to market to sell their wares' implicates the future sense 'They will sell their wares in the market'. When the expression generalizes to contexts in which literal motion towards a destination is excluded, as in 'It's going to rain', a metaphorical transfer of MOTION IN SPACE to MOTION IN TIME emerges.

The deontic to epistemic shifts in the English modals may show the same pattern. As we have seen, deontic should may implicate epistemic should in all temporal contexts and the same implicature is available for must in some environments. Epistemic senses also developed for may and can. Bybee et al (1994: 197-9) argue that epistemic possibility may arose by implicature in the Middle English period out of general

1 It could also be argued that some of the individual steps here are metaphorical, although that is not Heine et al.'s intention. To call a hut a 'house-child', for example, might be said to attribute metaphorical childhood to the hut in terms of one property which is the grounds for the metaphor, in this case the property 'small'. Any example of a change which focusses on one element of a lexical concept may be described in the same terms, where the selected sense component is the grounds of an analogy between the old and new referent.

- 14 - ability may, originally physical ability may. (Deontic may was already present in the Old English period, according to the OED.) Similarly, can developed 'mental ability, know-how' > 'general ability' > 'epistemic possibility'. The deontic use of can (expressing permission), not mentioned in the OED, is more limited, and is still considered to be non-standard in some varieties.

The paired deontic and epistemic senses for must, should, may and can emerged by different pathways, plausibly by implicature in at least some instances. Once established, the whole paradigm unquestionably has the structure typical of metaphor, as demonstrated by Sweetser (1990), who adapts Talmy's (1988) force dynamics model to analyse deontic and epistemic modals, in addition to other expressions of forcing, letting and allowing. One might speculate that the late addition of deontic can is analogic to may, triggered by the deontic:epistemic parallelism. The deontic:epistemic metaphorical mapping is consistent with Lakoff & Johnson's (1980) theory of metaphor as commonly based on a rishly structured concept associated with a field of expressions, rather than with a single word, as in their STATUS=VERTICAL, expressed in social climber, high/low rank, she married beneath her, upwardly mobile, and so on. The transfer of inner structure from one concept to another is persuasive evidence for the presence of metaphor.

Metaphor has long been recognized as a major mechanism for semantic change, particularly in those semantic domains where according to Lakoff & Johnson's (1980) thesis, our very thinking is metaphorically structured, including, for example, domains such as space, time and motion underlying the meaning of grammaticalized forms. The basic status of such conceptual metaphors is supported by their appearance in many languages. Heine et al. show that for at least some changes in these areas, metaphor operates only on a larger timescale, emerging indirectly from a series of implicatural steps.

This contrasts with the fairly direct creative metaphorical semantic changes found in lexical domains which are by no means conceptually basic, such as the changes in 20th century English studied by Warren (1992). Her examples include in the ball park > 'approximate area of an estimate', baseload 'minimum amount of electric power that a plant must produce' > 'minimum amount of goods to stay in business', blind-side > 'to deal an unexpected blow', footprint > 'area in which debris from spacecraft may scatter', and many others.

These two kinds of metaphor present an interesting contrast. On the one hand, apparently conceptually basic metaphors, sometimes shared across languages, are observed to emerge only indirectly by incremental steps. On the other hand, conceptually elaborate and idiosyncratic metaphors can arise directly. The tension between these two patterns may reward further investigation.

6. SUMMARY

In summary, if implicature is construed broadly to subsume all the inferential processes available in language use, then most, perhaps all of the major types of semantic change can be attributed to implicature. Differentiating more finely, metaphor and metonymy (which are themselves not always readily distinguishable)

- 15 - produce the ambiguity or polysemy pattern of added meaning, in contrast to the merger pattern, which is commonly attributed to information-strengthening generalized conversational implicature, after Horn and Atlas & Levinson. On an alternative view, implicature (narrowly construed) and metonymy are grouped together in contrast to metaphor, on the grounds that the two former mechanisms are based on sense contiguity, while metaphor is based on sense comparison or analogy. I have suggested that the relation between metonymy and narrow implicature is really analogic, and does not support identifying the two mechanisms. Classic Gricean particularized conversational implicature, of great importance in pragmatics generally, apperas to play no part in semantic change, presumably because it fails the primary requirement of associating new meaning with a given form.

REFERENCES

Aijmer, Karin (1985) 'The semantic development of will' in Fisiak, J. ed. (1985), 11- 21. Atlas, Jay David & Stephen C. Levinson (1981) 'It-clefts, informativeness, and : radical pragmatics (Revised Standard Version)', in Peter Cole ed. (1981) Radical pragmatics, New York: Academic Press. 1-61. Bybee, Joan & William Pagliuca (1987) 'The evolution of future meaning' in Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical (ICHL 7), Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 109-22. Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca (1994) The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fisiak, Jacek ed. (1985) Historical and historical word-formation, Berlin and New York: Mouton. Geeraerts, Dirk (1997) Diachronic prototype semantics: a contribution to historical lexicology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Geis, Michael & Arnold Zwicky (1971) 'On invited inferences', Linguistic Inquiry 2, 561-6. Grice, H. P. (1975) ' and conversation' in Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan eds. Speech Acts (Syntax and Semantics 3), New York: Academic Press, 41-58. Heine, Bernd (1997) Cognitive foundations of grammar, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer (1991) Grammaticalization: a conceptual framework, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (1993) Grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horn, Lawrence R (1984) 'Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature', in D. Schiffrin, ed. Meaning, form and use in context: linguistic applications (Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1984), Washington: Georgetown University Press, 11-42. Horn, Laurence R. (1989) A natural history of negation, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Kempson, Rachel (1980) 'Ambiguity and word meaning' in Greenbaum, S., G. Leech, & J. Svartvik eds. Studies in English linguistics, London: Longman, 7-16.

- 16 - König, Ekkehard (1985) 'Where do concessives come from? On the development of concessive connectives', in J. Fisiak ed. (1985), 263-82. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors we live by, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinson, Stephen C. (1983) Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipka, Leonhard (1985) 'Inferential features in historical semantics', in J. Fisiak ed. (1985). 339-54. Sperber, Dan & (1986) Relevance: Communication and cognition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Stern, Gustav (1931) Meaning and change of meaning, Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag. Sweetser, Eve E. (1990) From etymology to pragmatics: metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonhard (1988) 'Force dynamics in language and cognition', Cognitive Science 12, 49-100. Taylor, John (1989) Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1989) 'On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of subjectification in semantic change', Language 65, 31-55. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Ekkehard König (1991) 'The semantics-pragmatics of grammaticalization revisited', in Elizabeth Closs Traugott & Bernd Heine eds. (1991) Approaches to grammaticalization vol 1, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 189-218. Warren, B. (1992) Sense developments: a contrastive study of the development of slang senses and novel standard senses in English, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.

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