Elements of information theory
Elements of information theory
Logic, language and computation, vol. 2
Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature
Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature
Relevance of communicative acts
TARK '01 Proceedings of the 8th conference on Theoretical aspects of rationality and knowledge
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According to standard pragmatics, we should account for conversational implicatures in terms of Grice's (1975) maxims of conversation. Neo-Griceans like Atlas & Levinson (1981) and Horn (1984) seek to reduce those maxims to the so-called Q and I-principles. In this paper I want to argue that (i) there are major problems for reducing Gricean pragmatics to these two principles, and (ii) that, in fact, we'd better account for implicatures in terms of the principles of (a) optimal relevance and (b) optimal coding. To formulate both, I will make use of Shannon's (1948) mathematical theory of communication.