The Top 10 Misconceptions about Implicature

I've known about conversational implicature a lot longer than I've known Larry. In 1967 I read Grice's " Logical and Conversation " in mimeograph, shortly after his William James lectures, and I read its precursor " (Implication), " section III of " The Causal Theory of Perception " , well before that. And I've thought, read, and written about implicature off and on ever since. Nevertheless, I know a lot less about it than Larry does, and that's not even taking into account everything he has uncovered about what was said on the subject long before Grice, even centuries before. So, now that I've betrayed my ignorance, I'll display my insolence. I'm going to identify the most pervasive and pernicious misconceptions about implicature that I've noticed over the years. This won't be a natural history of them. I have neither the time, the space, nor the patience for such a scholarly endeavor. It would also be unseemly, as if what I am doing isn't. At any rate, I'll keep things short and to the point (ten points, actually), though this will make me seem a bit glib if not dogmatic. I won't target the sources of these misconceptions, much less delineate their paths of propagation or document the damage they've wrought. I'll simply identify them and, with the help of a handy distinction or an overlooked possibility, suggest how each might arise. I won't follow David Letterman and present them in reverse order of magnitude. Nor will I present them in order of 2 importance or frequency of manifestation. Rather, I'll put them in an easy to follow sequence. Only the last two or three, I hope, will seem contentious (unless otherwise indicated, by implicature I will always mean conversational implicature). Here's the list: 1. Sentences have implicatures. 2. Implicatures are inferences. 3. Implicatures can't be entailments. 4. Gricean maxims apply only to implicatures. 5. For what is implicated to be figured out, what is said must be determined first. 6. All pragmatic implications are implicatures. 7. Implicatures are not part of the truth-conditional contents of utterances. 8. If something is meant but unsaid, it must be implicated. 9. Scalar " implicatures " are implicatures. 10. Conventional " implicatures " are implicatures. These formulations of the top ten misconceptions about implicature will appear as section headings in what follows. Please don't take that for an endorsement of any of them. …