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11.2: Distinguishing truth-conditional vs. use-conditional meaning

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    11.2.1 Diagnostic properties of conventional implicatures

    A passage from Grice’s comments on conventional implicatures was quoted in Chapter 8, which included the following discussion of the meaning of therefore:

    If I say (smugly), He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave, I have certainly committed myself, by virtue of the meaning of my words, to its being the case that his being brave is a consequence of (follows from) his being an Englishman… I do not want to say that my utterance of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, false should the consequence in question fail to hold. (Grice 1975: 44)

    Based on Grice’s comments, Potts formulates a definition of conventional implicatures that includes the following points: (i) conventional implicatures are (normally) beliefs of the speaker (“I have certainly committed myself”), and so in a sense “speaker-oriented”; (ii) they are part of the intrinsic, conventional meaning of a given expression or construction (“by virtue of the meaning of my words”), and so are not cancellable; (iii) they do not contribute to the truthconditional content which is the main point of the assertion.4

    Potts uses the term at-issue content to refer to the main point of an utterance: the core information that is asserted in a statement or queried in a question. So in Grice’s example, the at-issue content of the assertion is He is English and brave. The conventional implicature contributed by therefore is that a causal relationship exists between two situations (in this case, between being an Englishman and being brave).

    The definition outlined above leads us to expect that conventional implicatures will have certain properties that allow us to distinguish them from other kinds of meaning. Potts suggests that conventional implicatures are:5

    Conventional, i.e., semantic in nature rather than pragmatic (as we defined those terms in Chapter 9). They must be learned as part of the meaning of a given word or construction, and cannot be calculated from context.

    Secondary: not part of the at-issue content, but rather used to provide supporting content, contextual information, editorial comments, evaluation, etc.

    Independent: separate from and logically independent of the at-issue content.

    Scopeless”: since conventional implicatures are not part of the at-issue content, they are typically not altered by negation, interrogative mood, etc. Often they take scope over the whole sentence even when embedded in subordinate clauses.

    Not presupposed:6 not assumed to be shared by the addressee, in contrast to presuppositions. So, for example, while the addressee might challenge a conventional implicature, as illustrated in (2) above, the “Hey, wait a minute” response seems less natural (3d).

    Many of these properties are similar to the properties of expressive meaning that we listed in Chapter 2. This is no accident, since expressives provide a clear example of use-conditional meaning. The expressive term jerk in example (3a) reflects a negative attitude toward Peterson, and this negative attitude is a belief of the speaker. The negative attitude is not calculated from the context, but comes directly from the conventional meaning of the word jerk. It is not part of the at-issue content of the sentence, so a hearer who does not share this negative attitude would not judge (3a) to be a false statement. The negative attitude is still expressed if the sentence is negated or questioned (3b–c).

    (3) a. That jerk Peterson is the only economist on this committee.

    b. That jerk Peterson isn’t the only economist on this committee.

    c. Is that jerk Peterson the only economist on this committee?

    d. #Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t know that Peterson was a jerk!

    Potts lists a wide variety of other expression types that illustrate these properties, including non-restrictive relative clauses and other kinds of parenthetical comments. In the remainder of this section we will focus on certain types of adverbs which seem to express use-conditional meanings.

    11.2.2 Speaker-oriented adverbs

    In this section we will discuss two classes of English adverbs. Evaluative adverbs (e.g. (un)fortunately, oddly, sadly, surprisingly, inexplicably) provide information about the speaker’s attitude toward the proposition being expressed. Speech act adverbials (e.g. frankly, honestly, seriously, confidentially) provide information about the manner in which the speaker is making the current statement. We will use the term speaker-oriented adverbs as a generic term that includes both of these classes.7

    There are several reasons for thinking that speaker-oriented adverbs do not contribute to the truth-conditional content of the sentence. The adverbs in (4), for example, seem to contradict the asserted proposition: one cannot tell a lie frankly; the faculty are unlikely to make their demand confidentially; and the mayor, it seems, was not curious enough. Yet these sentences are not contradictions, precisely because these adverbs are not understood as contributing to the at-issue propositional content of the sentence. Rather, they provide information about the manner in which the speech act is being performed (4a–b) or the speaker’s attitude toward the proposition expressed (4c).

    (4) a. Frankly, your cousin is a habitual liar.
    b. Confidentially, the faculty are planning to demand that the provost resign.
    c. Curiously the mayor never asked where all the money came from.

    Because they do not contribute to the proposition that is being asserted, it would be inappropriate to challenge the truth of a statement based on the content expressed by these adverbs (5–6). The hearer may express disagreement with the adverbial content by saying something like: I agree that p, but I do not consider that curious/fortunate/etc. But this would not be grounds for calling the original statement false.

    (5) A: Curiously/fortunately the mayor never asked where all the money came from.
    B: That’s not true; he asked me just last week.
    B’: #That’s not true; he never asked, but there is nothing curious/fortunate about that.

    (6) A: Frankly/confidentially, Jones is not the best-qualified candidate for this job.
    B: That’s not true; he is the only candidate who holds a relevant degree.
    B’: #That’s not true; he is not qualified, but you are not speaking frankly/confidentially.

    Further evidence for the claim that these speaker-oriented adverbs are not part of the propositional content being asserted comes from their behavior under negation and questioning. When a sentence containing an evaluative or speech act adverbial is negated or questioned, the adverb itself cannot be interpreted as part of what is being negated or questioned. For example, (7a) cannot mean ‘It is not fortunate that the best team won’ but only ‘It is fortunate that the best team did not win.’ Example (7b) cannot mean ‘Was it unfortunate that he lost the vision in that eye?’ but only ‘Did he lose the vision in that eye? If so, it was unfortunate.’ Speech act adverbials in questions like (7c) are not part of what is being questioned, but generally describe the manner in which the speaker wants the addressee to answer the question. As such examples show, evaluative and speech act adverbials are not interpreted as being under the scope of sentence negation or interrogative mood.

    (7) a. … the best team fortunately didn’t win on this occasion.8

    b. Was it ok or did he unfortunately lose the vision in that eye?9

    c. Is he, frankly, combative enough? (referring to a potential presidential candidate)10

    These claims about speaker-oriented adverbs apply only to their use as sentence adverbs, where the speaker uses them to describe his own manner of speaking or attitude toward the current speech act. Sentence adverbs occur most freely in sentence initial position, as in (8a) and (9a); but other positions are also possible (normally with the adverb set off from the rest of the sentence by pauses) as illustrated in (8b–d) and (9b–d).

    (8) a. Curiously, the mayor never asked where all the money came from.
    b. The mayor, curiously, never asked where all the money came from.
    c. The mayor never asked, curiously, where all the money came from.
    d. The mayor never asked where all the money came from, curiously.

    (9) a. Frankly/confidentially, Jones is not the best-qualified candidate for this job.
    b. Jones, confidentially, is not the best-qualified candidate for this job.
    c. Jones is not, frankly, the best-qualified candidate for this job.
    d. Jones is not the best-qualified candidate for this job, frankly.

    A number of speech act adverbials also have a second use as manner adverbs, typically occurring within the VP as in (10A). In this use they describe the manner of the agent of a reported speech act. When these forms are used as manner adverbs, they do contribute to the “at issue” content of the sentence. We can see that this is so because the truth of an assertion can be challenged if such an adverb is misused, as in (10B).

    (10) A: Jones told the committee frankly/confidentially about his criminal record.
    B: That’s not true; he told them, but he did not speak frankly/confidentially.

    Moreover, these manner adverbs are part of the propositional content which can be negated (11b) and questioned (12b). This contrasts with the behavior of the same forms used as sentence adverbs, which are not interpreted as being included under negation (11a) or questioning (12a).

    (11) a. Jones did not, confidentially, inform the committee about his criminal record.
    b. Jones did not inform the committee confidentially about his criminal record; he told them in a public hearing.

    (12) a. Confidentially, did Jones tell the committee about this?
    b. Did Jones tell you this confidentially, or can we inform the other members of the committee?

    A number of the evaluative adverbs are morphologically related to an adjective that takes a propositional argument. In simple sentences, the adverbial and adjectival forms of a given root can be used to paraphrase each other, as seen in (13–15).

    (13) a. Fortunately, Jones doesn’t realize how valuable this parchment is.
    b. It is fortunate that Jones doesn’t realize how valuable this parchment is.

    (14) a. Curiously the mayor never asked where all the money came from.
    b. It is curious that the mayor never asked where all the money came from.

    (15) a. Oddly, Jones never got that parchment appraised before he put it up for auction.
    b. It is odd that Jones never got that parchment appraised before he put it up for auction.

    However, evaluative adjectives, in contrast to the corresponding evaluative adverbs, do contribute to the at-issue content of the utterance. They can provide grounds for challenging the truth of a statement, as in (16), and they are part of the propositional content which can be negated (17) or questioned (18).

    (16) A: It is curious/fortunate that the mayor never asked where all the money came from.
    B: That’s not true; the fact that he never asked is {not curious at all/most unfortunate}.

    (17) It is not odd that Jones asked for an appraisal before he bought that parchment; it seems natural under the circumstances.

    (18) A: Was it odd that Jones did not ask for an appraisal?
    B. No, I think it was fairly natural under the circumstances.

    To summarize, we have argued that evaluative adverbs and speech act adverbials in English contribute use-conditional rather than truth-conditional meaning to the utterances in which they occur. We argued this on the grounds that they are independent of and secondary to the “at issue” propositional content of the utterance, they cannot be negated or questioned, and they do not affect the truth value of a statement. But clearly the meaning that these adverbs contribute is conventional: it has to be learned, rather than being calculated from the context of use. Moreover, they are not presupposed, that is, they are not treated as if they were already part of the common ground.


    4 Potts (2005; 2012); see also Horn (1997: 39).

    5 Potts (2015); a similar list is presented for expressives in Potts (2007c).

    6 Potts uses the term “Backgrounded” for this concept.

    7 The label evaluative adverbs comes from Ernst (2009). Ernst uses the term speakeroriented adverbs as to include not only evaluative adverbs and speech act adverbials, but also modal adverbs like probably. Potts (2005) uses the term speaker-oriented adverbs to refer to the class that I call evaluative adverbs.

    8 http://sportwitness.ning.com/forum/topics/nextgen

    9 www.inspire.com/groups/preem...e-retina-away/

    10 www.wbur.org/2011/12/21/romney-nh-6


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