I give a new account of neg-raising with belief predicates as scaleless implicatures, inferences that are predicted by grammatical theories scalar when quantifier projects subdomain alternatives but no alternative. argue the inference should be treated an implicature because parallels observed in its distribution and other known cases implicatures (namely typical free choice effects, reported i...

1. Introduction The main topic of this paper is the phenomenon of scalar implicature. Typical examples are given in (1)-(4): (1) a. Bill has got some of Chomsky's papers. b. The speaker believes that Bill hasn't got all of Chomsky's papers. (2) a. There will be five of us for dinner tonight. b. There won't be more than five of us for dinner tonight. (3) a. X: I like Mary. She's intelligent and ...

Paul Grice warned that 'the nature of conventional implicature needs to be examined before any free use of it, for explanatory purposes, can be indulged in' (1978/1989: 46). Christopher Potts heeds this warning, brilliantly and boldly. Starting with a definition drawn from Grice's few brief remarks on the subject, he distinguishes conventional implicature from other phenomena with which it migh...

There is much current debate about processing scalar implicature, but a considerable body of empirical evidence seems to support the idea that it requires additional time and effort on the part of the hearer (e.g. Breheny, Katsos and Williams 2005, Bott and Noveck 2004 and many others). The goal of this study was to contribute to our understanding of the cognitive processes that go on as compre...