How to cancel an implicature

Abstract

Cancelability is one of the main tests to identify conversational implicature in general, and scalar implicatures in particular. Despite this fact, cancelability itself is a phenomenon rarely looked at. This paper presents an account of when the cancellation of a scalar implicature is an acceptable discourse move and provides experimental evidence to support our proposal. Our main claim is that the felicity of a scalar implicature cancellation depends on the discourse structure. More specifically, cancellation is acceptable only if it addresses a Question Under Discussion that differs from the previous one. As will be shown, this proposal has the additional benefit of permitting us to tease apart cancellations from self-repairs.

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

“…In two empirical studies, Mayol & Castroviejo (2013) test whether or not atissueness influences the felicity judgments of cancellation for scalar implicatures. What they find is that cancellation was rated significantly better when the at-issue content in the cancellation differed from the original at-issue inference (Kuppevelt 1996), which is illustrated in the contrast in (5).…”

“…A: It was Brian's book that got me interested in clefts. (topic-comment it-cleft) 2015), intra-speaker cancellation (Mayol & Castroviejo 2013), NPI licensing, among other things (Horn 2014). Yet Drenhaus, Zimmermann & Vasishth (2011), Destruel (2012, and Destruel et al (2015) have all modelled their claims about the not-atissue exhaustivity of clefts compared to the behavior of the at-issue exhaustivity of exclusives.…”

Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives

“…Therefore, the different phrasing of the offered reading might be a potential disturbing factor to be taken into account carefully in future experiments. Once this case is discounted, if Mayol and Castroviejo (2013) are correct in linking cancelation and QUD, this experiment half confirms and half corrects the received wisdom on the levels of meaning in exclamatives. On the one hand, it confirms that the high degree meaning is not part of the at-issue meaning of exclamatives, in accordance with the presupposition and the implicature analyses discussed in section 2.…”

“…The complexities of the operations involved in denial are discussed at length in Geurts (1998). See also Mayol and Castroviejo (2013) for the cancellation of implicatures. degree part is projective meaning.…”

That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts

“…These findings indicate that the exhaustiveness of clefts is weaker than would be expected on a semantic account. However, Mayol & Castroviejo (2013) and Xue & Onea (2011) claim that corrective but-responses are in fact contradictions of not-at-issue content in the sense of Simons et al 2010 andTonhauser et al 2013. Hence, the results of Onea & Beaver 2009 just show that exhaustivity in clefts is not-at-issue, but would be in line with a pragmatic as well as a semantic account.…”