IMPLICATURE AND SEMANTIC CHANGE Kate Kearns University of Canterbury September 2000 (To appear under the title 'Implicature and language change' in Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert & Chris Bulcaen eds. Handbook of Pragmatics 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 Cooperative Principle 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 scalar implicature 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 proposition 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