QuotationMarks and Kinds ofMeaning Arguments in favour of a pragmatic account∗ Daniel Gutzmann (University of Frankfurt) & Erik Stei (University of Bonn) February 16, 2010 Abstract The strategy of this paper is twofold: First, we carry out a systematic investigation of the question of what specic kind of meaning quotation marks contribute to the overall meaning of an utterance. We consider the following kinds of meaning: literal meaning (§ 2.1), conventional implicature (§ 2.2), presupposition (§ 2.3), and conversational implicature (§ 2.4). We present arguments in favour of a pragmatic analysis of quotation marks, claiming that the notion of conversational implicature seems to be the most promising alternative: All general features of this kind of meaning are met by quotational constructions. Nonetheless, an approach based on conversational implicatures faces some problems when taking direct and pure quotations into account, namely eects on truth-conditions and on grammaticality. Thus, our second aim is to propose acceptable solutions to these criticisms in § 3. Finally, in § 4, we consider how a radical pragmatic account of quotation could be integrated into a Neo-Gricean architecture of the semantics/pragmatics-interface. 1 "Varieties" of Quotation Traditionally, quotation was considered a semantic phenomenon. The origin of this view can be traced back to the proper name theory advocated by Alfred Tarski (1983) and W.V.O. Quine (1951) who postulated a close connection between truth-conditions and quotation marks in the ambit of formal logic. Various theorists attacked their remarks by somewhat unfairly applying it to natural language (cf. Davidson 1984, Washington 1992, Cappelen & Lepore 1997, Saka 1998) but even these critics more or less maintained the focus on semantics. We think it useful to reconsider this position. François Recanati recently proposed a rather pragmatic analysis, according to which at least some kinds of quotation are "a matter of what people do with words" (Recanati 2001: 637). In this paper, we want to focus on the reasons for developing a pragmatic account of quotation marks. We hope to show that conversational implicature is the most suitable level of analysis for the contribution of quotation marks as it allows to include a broader variety of quotation than other theories, namely the following types: ∗Thanks to all participants of the International Conference on Quotation and Meaning (ICQM) at the University of Mainz, especially to Manuel Garcia Carpintero, Bart Geurts, Mikhail Kissine, and Ede Zimmermann for their valuable comments at the conference. Elke Brendel, Philippe De Brabanter, Jörg Meibauer, Paul Saka and Markus Steinbach commented on an earlier version of this paper which claried many points and helped to considerably improve the paper. All remaining shortcomings are due to our stubbornness. 2. Kinds of meaning 2 (1) a. "This theory is dicult to understand" is a sentence. pure quotation (pq) b. Alice says, "This theory is dicult to understand." direct quotation (dq) c. Alice says that this theory "is dicult to understand". mixed quotation (mq) d. This "theory" is dicult to understand. scare quotes (sq) e. (headline of today's newspaper) Alice's "new" theory! emphatic quotes (eq)1 Let us consider an ordinary English speaker and his interpretations of the examples given in (1). What inuence does each quotation have on the meaning of the sentence in which it occurs? Here are some intuitive answers: In (1a), the qm signal that the quoted words are mentioned rather than used. In (1b) and (1c), they suggest that Alice uttered the quoted words. The reader of (1d) would infer that the alleged theory does not deserve the label theory. The type of quotation represented in (1e) seems to put emphasis on the novelty of the theory. Note, however, that these "intuitive" interpretations are less obvious than it may seem at rst sight. In fact, as we will argue, the correct interpretation of a sentence containing quotation marks is highly context-dependent, and the same quotational sentence may convey dierent speaker meanings, depending on the conversational background of the utterance. Nonetheless, in the rest of this paper we will use the labels as introduced above to indicate that a specic reading of the quotation is to be considered, although we will not always explicitly describe a specic context yielding that reading. Please consider this only a matter of economy in description. Some terminological remarks: The constructions we are dealing with consist of an expression and a pair of quotation marks enclosing it. We will call these constructions "quotational constructions" or just "quotations". The expressions between the quotation marks may be called "quoted material", "quoted expression" or, if you like, "quotatum". Obviously, quotation marks will be called "quotationmarks" or abbreviated "qm". We will refer to a sentence or an utterance containing a quotation with "quotational sentence" or "quotational utterance". We will sometimes speak of "utterances" or "utterance meanings" of quotations. This is to be understood as referring to written utterances as qm are a phenomenon of written language. 2 Kinds of meaning It is dicult to nd criteria in order to determine the kind of meaning contributed by a certain expression, and although there may be some dispute regarding how exactly to construe the taxonomy of meaning, we assume at least the following four basic kinds of meaning which we think are more or less uncontroversial: (i) literal meaning: the basic semantic meaning of an expression as encoded in the lexicon, (ii) conventional implicatures: conventionally conveyedmeaning that is independent of the ordinary propositional content, (iii) presuppositions: aspects of meaning that are rationally presupposed to hold in order to evaluate an utterance, and (iv) conversational implicatures: further context-dependent, pragmatically inferred aspects of utterancemeaning. In the following 1 This type of quotation is oen labelled "greengrocer's quotes", but we would like to propose a more functional and less elitist term. 2.1 Literal Meaning 3 subsections, we apply some procedures to test which of these categories ts the meaning conveyed by quotation marks best. 2.1 Literal Meaning If the meaning contributed by a quotation marks were literal content, i. e., semantic content as encoded in the lexicon, it should be calculable compositionally from the meaning of the quoted expression and the meaning of quotation marks. Although this is not impossible a priori, it is obvious that this would have to include accounting for at least some contextual aspects. To see why, consider the following example: (2) Charles G. Taylor is "innocent". Obviously it is dicult to grasp the exact meaning conveyed by an utterance of (2). This is due to a kind of contextual underdetermination of what is meant by the qm, i. e., in each context the utterance conveys another speaker meaning: (3) a. Written in a discourse on human rights. b. Charles G. Taylor is "innocent". (4) a. A: What did thee Association for the Legal Defense Of Charles G. Taylor say about Liberia's ex-dictator? b. B: Charles G. Taylor is "innocent". (5) a. Written on a poster of e Association for the Legal Defense Of Charles G. Taylor, a group lobbying for the acquittal of Liberia's ex-dictator.2 b. Charles G. Taylor is "innocent". Depending on the utterance context, an utterance of (2) will receive a dierent interpretation. In case it is read in the context of (3a), the quotation will be interpreted as scare quotes (sq), while it will be understood as mixed quotation (mq) if it is written in response to (4a). Finally, following (5a), we will end up with emphatic quotes (eq). This shows that a simple-minded treatment of quotation as literal content does not lead us far since the interpretation of a quotational construction seems to depend crucially on extra-linguistic context. However, context dependency does not imply that quotation cannot contribute literal meaning aer all. It only shows that if we wanted to treat quotation this way, we would have to get contextual information into the literal meaning. One way to achieve this is to analyze quotation by means of indexicals with reference to the context itself.3 Opting for this view, one would have to claim that a quotation literally means some property p provided by a context C where p is some kind of alternative meaning to the literal meaning of the quoted expression. Thus, we would get something along the following lines: (6) 'fresh'↝ p ∈ C such that p is an alternative meaning for fresh in C. This analysis is similar to the one proposed by Geurts & Maier (2005), who analyze quotation as triggering a presupposition of an utterance event in which some speaker 2 This is, in fact, the context in which we came upon this example: Cf. http://www.tagesschau.de/ sendungen/0,,OID6866680_VID686\6842_RESreal120_PLYinternal_NAV_,00.html (state: AUG4-2007). 3 This, however, is not the sense in which indexicality is employed in the demonstrative theory (Davidson 1984, Cappelen & Lepore 1997), according to which the qm are demonstratives referring to quoted material which is not, "from a semantical point of view, part of the sentence at all" (Davidson 1984: 90). 2.2 Conventional Implicature 4 used the quoted words to express some predicate p. Although the proposal in (6) seems to be a possible way to treat quotation as contributing literal meaning, we nevertheless reject it for the following two reasons: First, (6) somehow misses the crucial point about the context dependency of quotation. It is not always the case that context provides us with a unique alternativemeaning for a quotation. The meaning of a quotation cannot be derived as straightforwardly as the meaning of pure indexicals like the famous rst person pronoun. It is rather akin to demonstratives like that, insofar as speaker intention seems to play a crucial role in determining the meaning of a quotational construction. This leads us to our second objection against dealing with quotation along the lines of (6). This view is commited to the claim that quotation is always truth-conditionally relevant. But, as we will argue in 2.4, there are cases in which quotation does not contribute to the truth conditions of the quotational utterance. 2.2 Conventional Implicature It is tempting to read Predelli 2003 as a proposal to analyze quotation marks as conveying conventional implicatures. In this paper, Predelli examines the notion of scare quotes, a phenomenon oen neglected in the literature on quotation.4 Indeed, thanks to his paper, sq received more attention in the discussion (cf. the contributions in De Brabanter 2005). Predelli analyzes scare quotes by means of a distinction betweenmessage and attachment, which is quite uncommon terminology, butwe donotwant to speculate about any possible reasons for the introduction of these terms. However, one of the hallmarks of Predelli's (2003) proposal is to analyze utterances containing scare quotes as expressing two distinct propositions.5 Following Bach's investigation of alleged conventional implicature devices, this means to reject the "one sentence, one proposition" (osop) assumption (Bach 1999: 350): (osop) One sentence, one proposition Every indicative sentence expresses exactly one proposition. According to Bach (1999), sentences containing expression like but and therefore express two propositions which are not conjunct. We can give the following semantic translation for but borrowing Potts' (2005) notation: (7) but ↝ λPλQλx . ⟨ P(x) ∧ Q(x) , Gy[P(y)→ ¬Q(y)] ⟩ The rst part of the formula-P(x)∧Q(x)-corresponds to the conjunctive function of the meaning of but while the second part-Gy[P(y)→ ¬Q(y)]-captures the adversative aspect. If the function in (7) is applied to its arguments, it will yield two propositions which are (and this is crucial) distinct and have to be interpreted independently of each other. 6 In some sense, such an approach is therefore 2-dimensional. For illustration, consider the following example: 4A seminal investigation was carried out by Reinhard Klockow (1976, 1978), especially in his comprehensive dissertation (Klockow 1980). 5 For some reason or other, Predelli (2003) does not speak of propositions, but this term seems to be fundamental in order to make sense of his view. 6 Note that the two propositions share the propositions P and Q as their arguments. That is the reason why Bach (1999: 352) calls expressions like but "preservative operators". 2.2 Conventional Implicature 5 (8) a. Mary is a linguist but a genius. b. P(x): linguist(mary) c. Q(x): genius(mary) d. message: linguist(mary) ∧ genius(mary) e. attachment: Gy[linguist(y)→ ¬genius(y)] In (8), but is applied to the propositions that Mary is a linguist (8b) and that Mary is a genius (8c). The rst dimension of meaning concerning but, which emerges when the function in (7) is fed with these two propositions, is the ordinary coordination given in (8d). The second proposition would be (8e) which expresses the (alleged) contrast between being a linguist and being a genius. Thus, an interpreted sentence containing but receives a truth value tuple instead of a single truth value (cf. Potts 2005: 50). Predelli (2003) labels the rst proposition expressed by an utterance like (8a) themessage and the second one the attachment. Both propositions conjoined are called the semantic prole of an utterance. Predelli (2003) then transfers his theory of message and attachment to the analysis of scare quotes. The semantic prole of an utterance with scare quotes expresses two distinct propositions: (i) the message, which equals the ordinary proposition that would be expressed by the utterance without any quotation, and (ii) the attachment that is contributed by the scare quotes. Following this analysis, the message of an utterance of (9a) would be (9b), while the attachment could be expressed by (9c):7 (9) a. The "debate" resulted in three cracked heads and two broken noses. b. message: The debate resulted in three cracked heads and two broken noses. c. attachment: It was not a debate but rather a brawl. There are a number of problems with this view. The rst is that, contrary to but and therefore, the contribution of sq to the semantic prole does not seem to be denite. While the semantics of but is relatively straightforward-we need a conjunctive and an adversative part-this is not the case for scare quotes. Sq could indicate (i) that the speaker is not fully committed to all aspects of the quoted expression like in (9a), (ii) that she uses the expression ironically like in example(3), or (iii) that she wants to apologize for her use of a somehow deviant expression (e.g. a dialectal expression). The second and even more serious problem concerns the attempt to analyze scare quotes by means of themessage and attachment theory in general. Recall that both the message and the attachment contribute to the semantic prole of an utterance, i. e., they are both communicated semantically by the speaker. But consider the following sq sentence (10a) with its message (10b) and its attachment (10c): (10) a. Peter's bagels are "fresh". (sq) b. message: Peter's bagels are fresh. c. attachment: Peter's bagels are not fresh. Crucially, if both the message and attachment associated with an utterance were part of its semantic prole, the semantic prole would yield a contradiction. Of course, the writer of (10a) does not communicate both (10b) and (10c). Although Predelli suggests that in some contexts, only the attachment is at issue, as in his example we watch 'color' TV, you, on the other hand, watch 'colour' TV (Predelli 2003: 22), he does not deliver an explanation of how it should be possible for the attachment to 'overwrite' the message. However, such a mechanism seems to be at work in cases like (10): The attachment 7 This example was brought up by (Predelli 2003: 3). 2.2 Conventional Implicature 6 not only gets priority over the message, but it is all that is communicated. Even if such processes are not always present in scare quotes, in many cases they are. Actually, if we take a closer look at the logical form of message and attachment in (9), Predelli's (2003) strategy will yield a contradiction as well:8 (11) a. The "debate" resulted in three cracked heads and two broken noses. b. message: ιx[debate(x) ∧ result-in(x)(broken-noses)] c. attachment: ιx[¬debate(x) ∧ brawl(x)] The fact that no strict 2-dimensional theory of quotation allows for the needed interaction between the twodimensions ofmeaning in order to account for examples like (11) provides prima facie arguments against such a treatment.9 Another serious problem of 2-dimensionalism is the scoping behaviour of conventional implicatures (cis), at least if understood along Potts' lines.10 According to Potts (2005), cis project out of the scope of every higher operator. We do not have to care about the logic behind this here, but to get an idea of it, consider the following cases of conventional implicature borrowed from Potts 2005: (12) a. The damn Republicans deserve public support. b. ⟨The Republicans deserve public support,The speaker does not like the Republicans ⟩ (13) a. Bush says that the damn Republicans deserve public support. b. ⟨Bush says that the Republicans deserve public support, The speaker does not like the Republicans ⟩ (14) a. Do the damn Republicans deserve public support? b. ⟨Do the Republicans deserve public support?, The speaker does not like the Republicans ⟩ According to Potts' (2005) theory, a sentence containing a ci conveys two propositions: the ordinary proposition as expressed by the sentence (this is called the at-issue content in Potts 2005) plus the ci as a second proposition. However, the ci proposition is always taken out of the semantic parsetree once it is calculated. Therefore, no operator is ever able to take scope over it.11 Hence the ci proposition that the speaker dislikes the Republicans always jumps out of the semantic structure of the rest of the utterance, regardless of whether it is embedded under an attitude verb like in (13) or a question like in (14). In contrast to Predelli's (2003) account of sq, Potts' (2005) theory is very explicit with regards to the scoping behaviour of cis. This makes it easy for us to test whether it is possible to analyze quotational constructions as cis. We only have to check whether the meaning contributed by a quotation also scopes out of the sentence or not. First, consider scare quotes: (15) a. Mary believes that Peter's bagels are "fresh". (sq) b. ⟨Mary believes that Peter's bagels are fresh, Peter's bagels are not fresh ⟩ c. Mary believes that Peter's bagels are not fresh. (16) a. Are Peter's bagels "fresh"? (sq) 8 As a matter of convenience, we ignore tense. 9 For further arguments against 2-dimensional theories of quotation, Geurts & Maier cf. 2005. 10 Since Predelli (2003) does not comment on the behaviour of embedded scare quotes, we will not consider his approach here. 11 This eect is achieved by a particular denition of the semantic types and a semantic rule called CI application. Cf. the appendix in Potts 2005 for the logical details. 2.3 Presupposition 7 b. #⟨Are Peter's bagels fresh?, Peter's bagels are not fresh ⟩ In case of sq, the meaning contributed by the quotation can be interpreted as having jumped out of the sentence, at least in the case of the belief report in (15). However, an embedded interpretation like (15c) is also available. But even worse for a Pottsean ci analysis of quotation, the unembedded reading is not available for sq in (16b) at all. Next, have a look at mixed quotation: (17) a. Mary believes that Coee & Bagels said that Peter's bagels are "fresh". (mq) b. #⟨Mary believes that Coee & Bagels said that Peter's bagels are fresh, Coee & Bagels used the word fresh ⟩ (18) a. Did Coee & Bagels say that Peter's bagels are "fresh"? (mq) b. #⟨Did Coee & Bagels say that Peter's bagels are fresh?, Coee & Bagels used the word fresh ⟩ Regarding mixed quotation, the results are even more obvious. If the contribution of the quotation escaped from the scope of the operators, both (17) and (18) would entail that Coee & Bagels in fact used the words "fresh". This is clearly not what an utterance of (17) or (18) means. Because of these problems, we think that an analysis of quotation along the lines of Potts (2005) is not promising at all. Not allowing for interaction and wrong predictions are two serious objections against treating quotations as contributing conventional implicatures. A look at the characteristic features of conventional implicatures will reveal another one. The list in (19) summarizes the most important features of conventional implicatures (cf. Potts 2005: 11 and § 2.5). (19) a. Conventional implicatures are independent of what is said. b. Conventional implicatures are speaker oriented. c. Conventional implicatures are detachable. d. Conventional implicatures are not context sensitive. e. Conventional implicatures yield multidimensional contents. We will not discuss the whole list in detail, but we have already shown in § 2.1 that quotations are highly context sensitive, i. e., (19d) is not met. But even if we x the meaning for the sake of argument e.g. to an interpretation as scare quotes, (19e) will lead into trouble while (19b) is generally not fullled. Furthermore, the meaning of a quotation seems to be nondetachable in contrast to (19c). For example, you can get an ironic reading by using italics instead of qm or, given that the context is rich enough, even without any special marking device. 2.3 Presupposition Following Geurts (1999: 6), we think that "there is a perfectly adequate procedure for testing if something is a presupposition", which is based on the projection behaviour of presuppositions and may be called 'Projection Test Battery' (ptb) (Geurts 1999: 6). The ptb consists of three stages, and if an expression suspect of triggering a presupposition passes all three stages, that is strong evidence for this expression being a presupposition trigger. However, the rst stage is sucient for our concerns.12 (ptb)e Projection Test Battery for presuppositions (Stage 1) Let φ{χ} be a sentence containing an expression, triggering the inference that χ is 12 For the whole procedure cf. Geurts 1999: 6–8. 2.3 Presupposition 8 true. Stage 1 Check if sentences of the following form would normally imply that χ is true: (i) not φ{χ} (ii) it is possible that φ{χ} (iii) a believes that φ{χ} (iv) if φ{χ} then ψ (v) either φ{χ} or ψ It should be obvious that the usual suspects like denite descriptions (e.g. the notorious the present king of France) and factive predicates (e.g. to regret, to know) all pass the rst stage of the ptb. In the history of linguistics it "may be hard to nd any class of para-linguistic inferences that have not been dubbed 'presuppositional' at some time", as Geurts (1999: 6) notes, quotation being no exception. Bart Geurts himself presents a presuppositional analysis together with Emar Maier (Geurts & Maier 2005). Thus, it might be interesting to examine whether the Geurts & Maier analysis is in accordance with ptb. According to Geurts & Maier (2005) a quotation triggers the presupposition that there is an individual x, an event e, and a property Q, such that x expresses (E) Q by means of fresh in e:13 (20) "fresh" >> xeQ∶ Ee(x ,Q , fresh)14 At least regarding mq, this analysis seems to be plausible at rst sight. The allusion to a speech-event distinct from the actual one seems to be the hallmark of mixed quotation. Hence, we prefer to count examples like (21) as mixed quotation as well, despite lacking a verbum dicendum. (21) The world is "all that is the case". Since in such cases the specic source of the quotation is absent and has to be reconstructed from the context, we may call these special instances of mq anaphoric mixed quotation (cf. Potts 2007).15 However, the fact that there is an allusion to another speech-event in mq does not provide any evidence for the presuppositional account of quotation provided by Geurts & Maier (2005). First, even if an allusion to a previous speech-event plays a central role in mq, this alone does not lead to the conclusion that this allusion is a presupposition. Second, it is not quite obvious how an analysis along the lines of (20) can account for sq, not to speak of eq. Therefore, we are tempted to reject an anlaysis like (20) for conceptual reasons. But to be sure, let us add some evidence by applying the ptb in order to get a more concise picture of whether quotational construction can be regarded as triggering a presupposition or not. Consider the case of mq, which is the primary subject of (20): (22) What did Alice say about Peter's bagels? a. Alice said that Peter's bagels are "fresh". b. Alice did not say that Peter's bagels are "fresh". c. It is possible that Alice said that Peter's bagels are "fresh". 13 Geurts & Maier (2005) are rather liberal concerning the solution of the presupposition of x and e. The solution of the speaker variable x may be the concrete individual, but it may be institutional or genetic as well. The same holds for the speech event e, which may be a concrete event or a habitual or genetic one. 14 As usual, ">>" stands for presupposes. 15 For philosophers, it is of course an easy exercise to gure out the source of the quotation in (21). 2.3 Presupposition 9 d. Peter believes that Alice said that Peter's bagels are "fresh". e. If Alice said that Peter's bagels are "fresh" then he would be very proud. f. Either Alice said that Peter's bagels are "fresh" or Mary has got a new theory. In (22a), there is clearly an allusion to a speech-event, e.g. Alice's utterance containing the word fresh to express something about Peter's bagels. But crucially, this allusion vanishes in each of the constructions in (22b)–(22d) which would normally allow presuppositions to pass through (accordingly, such constructions are called holes). Furthermore, if the allusion in mq were in fact a presupposition, then its falsity should lead at least to shaky intuitions about the truth conditions of the utterance. Consider the infamous case ofe present king of France is bald. Since there is no king of France at the time of writing this paper, the presupposition that there actually is a present king of France is not fullled and hence, intuitions vary whether such a sentence is strictly speaking false or does not receive any truth value at all. Compare this to the mq in (22a). Even if neither Alice nor anybody else ever uttered the word fresh to say anything about Peter's bagels, we would not hesitate to assign a truth value to (22a), whichever it should be. Together with the 'projecting behaviour' of the allusion this provides us with strong support for our rejection of an analysis of quotation as presuppositions following Geurts & Maier 2005. Furthermore, it is hard to see how their proposal could deal with sq and the like. This does not mean, however, that a presuppositional account is mistaken per se. It could be the case that a presuppositonal account similar to the one proposed in (6) yields better results. A presuppositional version of it, such as (23), diers from (20) as it does not rely on the need for a previous utterance event. It seems quite obvious that sq and eq do not necessarily presuppose a previous utterance; the only thing needed is an alternative meaning for the quoted material being accessible in context. Let us check how far such an approach could take us. (23) "fresh" >> p∶ p is an alternative meaning for fresh. A proposal like that seems to be able to derive not only the mq reading, but also that of sq and eq. Moreover, it seems to be more adequate than its sibling (6), because-since in this case we deal with presupposition instead of literal meaning-we can allow the needed pragmatic reasoning to play a crucial role in calculating the speaker intended meaning for each context. But if we check some further facts about presuppositions, it is obvious that this analysis does not hold either. A well-known fact about presuppositions is that they do not project out of certain constructions, which are therefore called 'plugs'. Typical plugs are propositional attitude verbs like to imagine, to dream or speech report verbs like to say. Consider the following examples: (24) a. Peter met the king of France. b. Peter dreams that he met the king of France. c. Peter imagines that he met the king of France. d. Peter says that he met the king of France. In sentences likes (24b)–(24d), the presupposition of (24a) (that there is a king of France) no longer holds. A common explanation for 'plugging' presuppositions is that they still hold – not in the global context of the whole utterance, but in the local context of the embedded sentence, i. e., in the world of Peter's dream, imagination or utterance respectively. In the case of (24b) for instance, we could paraphrase the local satisfaction of the presupposition along the following lines: 2.4 Conversational Implicature 10 (25) Peter dreams that he met the king of France. ↝ Peter dreams that there is a king of France and that he met him. Consider how, in contrast to this, the alleged presupposition of an alternative meaning for the quoted expression behaves if embedded under such plugs. (26) a. Peter's bagels are "fresh". b. Alice dreams that Peter's bagels are "fresh". c. Alice imagines that Peter's bagels are "fresh". d. Alice says that Peter's bagels are "fresh". Here, it is crucial that the meaning conveyed by the quotation holds in the actual context, not in the embedded one. With (26b) for instance, we want to say something about Alice's dream about Peter's bagels, e.g. that Alice dreams that Peter's bagels are not fresh at all (sq reading), that Alice dreams that Peter's bagels are what Coee & Bagels called "fresh" (mq reading), or that she dreams that they are very fresh (eq reading). An interpretation of (26b) according to which the alleged presupposition of (26b) is satised locally, i. e., (27), is highly implausible. (27) Alice dreams that Peter's bagels are "fresh" ↝ Alice dreams that there is an alternative meaning p for fresh and that Peter's bagels are p. Furthermore, there is a perfect reading for (26b) available in which the writer wants to convey that Alice dreams that Peter's bagels are fresh and that the writer applies qm to distance herself from Alice's dream for whatever reason. It all depends on the context in which (26b) is uttered. Hence, typical plugs do not plug qm. 2.4 Conversational Implicature Although there is no set of necessary and jointly sucient conditions for an aspect of what is communicated to count as conversational implicature, usually at least the following characteristic properties of conversational implicatures are mentioned (cf. Levinson 1983, Horn 2005, Meibauer 2006): (28) a. Conversational implicatures are context dependent. b. Conversational implicatures are nondetachable. c. Conversational implicatures are reinforceable. d. Conversational implicatures are calculable. e. Conversational implicatures are cancelable. We have already argued for the fact that the interpretation of a quotation crucially depends on the context of utterance. The examples (2)–(5) showed that the very same quotational construction can receive dierent interpretations by contextual variations. An alternative way to establish the context sensitivity of mq, sq, and eq is by means of the collective description test, proposed by Cappelen & Lepore (2005) to prove that some allegedly context sensitive expressions are not, in fact, context sensitive (cf. Cappelen & Lepore 2005: 99): (cdt)e collective description test If an expression e is context sensitive, solely on the basis of knowing that there are two contexts C1 and C2in which an utterance containing Ae and an utterance 2.4 Conversational Implicature 11 containing Be are true respectively, it cannot be automatically inferred that there is a true utterance containing (A&B)e. However, the collective description test as formulated above is biased, because it only accounts for truth conditionally relevant contents. But of course, non-truth-conditionally relevant context sensitive aspects of an utterance may block a collective description as well. Therefore, we need a slightly reformulated version of Cappelen's and Lepore's test, to capture non-truth-conditional aspects of an utterance as well: (mcdt) e modied collective description test If an expression e is context sensitive, on the basis of knowing that there are two contexts in which an utterance containing Ae and an utterance containing Be are appropriate respectively, it cannot be automatically inferred that there is an appropriate utterance containing (A&B)e. To see how non-truth-conditional aspects of an utterance may block collective descriptions because of their context sensitivity, consider the following examples of conversational implicatures:16 (29) a. C1: Mary has got three children. b. C2: Joan has got three children. c. ↛Mary and Joan have got three children. Suppose that (29a) is uttered in a context C1 in which the exact number ofMary's children is at issue, for instance in a context in which a birthday party is being planned. In such a context, (29a) will conversationally implicate that Mary has no more than three children. Suppose that in contrast (29b) is uttered in a dierent context C2 in which the minimum number of Joan's kids is at issue, for example a context regarding tax purposes. In that context, an utterance of (29b) will not implicate that Joan has nomore than three children. Thus, suppose Joan actually has ve children. Of course, the utterance of (29a) in C1 will not only be true regarding its semantic content but also appropriate. The same holds for uttering (29b) in C2. Crucially, the appropriateness of both utterances in their particular context does not guarantee that an utterance of (29c) will be appropriate. In a context in which the denite number of children is relevant like the birthday party context, uttering (29c) will be inappropriate or even misleading and could end up with two crying children. Note that an utterance of (29c) only allows parallel interpretations: Either (29c) communicates that Mary and Joan have exactly three children or that both have at least three children.17 Equipped with mcdt, we can now provide more evidence for the context sensitivity of our three quotational constructions. (30) a. C1: Peter's Bagels are "fresh". (sq) b. C2: Mary's Bagels are "fresh". (eq) c. ↛ Peter's and Mary's Bagels are "fresh". Just as in the example discussed above, an utterance of (30a)might be appropriate in some contextC1 and an utterance of (30b)might be appropriate in another contextC2. Suppose, 16We are aware of the fact that there is some dispute concerning the meaning of numbers. However, for sake of illustration, allow us the view that three semantically means at least three while the upperbound at most three is provided by an implicature. 17Of course, (29c) could mean that Mary and Joan have three children together, but this ambiguity does not matter for the point we want to make here. 2.4 Conversational Implicature 12 that in C1 the quotes receive a reading as scare quotes while in C2, they receive a reading as emphatic quotes. Obviously, there is no context in which (30c) would be appropriate because either it would communicate that both Peter's and Mary's bagels are disgusting or that both Peter's and Mary's bagels are extraordinarily fresh. Analogous to the case of (29c), (30c) does not allow distinct interpretations for the quotations. Combining the evidence provided by the examples in (3)–(5), (30), and mcdt, we conclude that context sensitivity is a crucial property of the quotational varieties considered. According to (28b), conversational implicatures are nondetachable. Nondetachability is commonly understood along the following lines (Meibauer 2006: 570): (31) If there is an expression X' that shares meaning with expression X that triggers the implicature, the same implicature should arise. As we have already argued at the end of § 2.2, the interpretations associated with eq, sq, and mq are not restricted to the presence of quotation marks as there are also other possibilites to convey the same meaning without using quotation marks. For further illustration, imagine a context in which a colleague says, smugly, that his own work is going to become as import as the work of Quine. Furthermore, assume that we all know this and we all know that the real Quine is unfortunately not able to speak to us in person anymore. Now suppose you utter this (borrowed from Recanati 2001): (32) Quine wants to speak us. Given the described context, (32) is a perfectly adequate utterance and we can reasonably take you to be implicating that our snobbish colleague wants to speak us. Of course, if our context is not rich enough, maybe because we do not know certain facts about our colleague or about Quine, enclosingQuine in qm is necessary to make sure that (32) is not interpreted as conveying anything about the philosopher Quine. Given the possibility of omitting quotationmarks while conveying the samemeaning, and given the possibility of using other means than qm, we conclude that the particular interpretation of a quotation is nondetachable. That conversational implicatures are reinforceable (28c) means that they can be made explicit without redundancy. This also holds for the particular interpretations due to quotation marks. Making them explicit does not yield redundancy but rather elaborates the intended interpretation of the quotes: (33) a. Peter's bagels are always "fresh". I get sick every time I eat them. b. Peter's bagels are always "fresh". Indeed, they are the freshest in town. c. Peter's bagels are always "fresh". At least, that's what I've read in Coee & Bagels. Another feature associatedwith conversational implicature – usually labeled calculability – demands that the meaning conversationally implicated could, in principle, be calculated on the basis of certain language independent conversational maxims and a general cooperative principle.18 For our purposes, a Q-principle and an I-principle will be sucient, although onemight use somem-principle as well, if one prefers a lessminimalist model. We will briey recall the relevant principles: (cp) Cooperative principle "Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which 18 The principles are developed in Grice 1975: 45-47 2.4 Conversational Implicature 13 it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." (Grice 1975: 45) (q) Q-principle "Say as much as you can (given I)." (cf. Horn 1984: 13) (i) I-principle "Say no more than you must (given Q)." (cf. Horn 1984: 13) For illustrative purposes, take McCawley's (1978) paradigmatic and well-known example: (34) a. Black Bart killed the sheri. b. Black Bart caused the sheri to die. (34a) seems to be in perfect accordancewith the two principles. In contrast, the expression used in (34b) is somehowmarked and a competent speaker, committed to the I-principle, would not utter this sentence if she wanted to convey that Black Bart shot the sheri (or killed him in another stereotypical way, e. g., by stabbing him with a knife). Rather, (34b) seems to convey that the sheri was killed in a non-standard way, e. g., Black Bart caused the sheri 's gun to backre by stung it with cotton. If this is correct, then a reading of (34b) according to which Black Bart shot the sheri is pragmatically blocked by (34a), as a reader would expect a competent writer to obey the I-principle and the writer knows that. Now, if a writer in fact utters (34b) the reader will expect her to have reasons for this, which indicates the need for further pragmatic reasoning, i. e., the intended speaker meaning has to be eshed out according to the context of the utterance. Quotation marks seem to produce a similar blocking eect: (35) Peter's new "theory" is dicult to understand. The expression theory, we propose, is marked by the application of qm and therefore it has to receive a marked interpretation that deviates from the standard interpretation, as the latter is blocked by the standard expression without qm. As we have seen, viewing qm as contributing conventional meaning to an utterance is problematic. Let us, therefore, assume that there is no semantic contribution of qm at all (nsc). Thus, given (36a), this would yield (36b). A more detailed inference might look like this: (36) a. The writerW wrote Peter's "theory" is dicult to understand. (assumtion) b. By (a) W said that Peter's new theory is dicult to understand. (nsc) c. W marked the term theory by enclosing it in quotation marks. (36a) d. If W only meant that Peter's new theory is dicult to understand, W would have violated (I) as she used a marked expression to convey an unmarked meaning. (I + Q) e. Given W is cooperative, she will not violate (I). (cp) f. W wanted to convey something more/other than that Peter's theory is dicult to understand. (36d) + (36e) So far, the inference that "theory" is to be interpreted in a non-standard way (in contrast to theory) is pretty much independent of the particular context of utterance. To esh out the target of quotation (Klockow 1980) or the point of quotation, as Recanati (2001) calls it, i. e., in order to substantiate the intended interpretation, we need a second part of the inferential process. This is where the specic context of utterance comes into play. Let us continue our inference sketched in (36) against the background of a specic context: 2.4 Conversational Implicature 14 (37) a. I know that W is a very critical scientist and has a very strict understanding of the term theory in scientic contexts. (world knowledge) b. W wrote (35) in a scientic context. (assumption) c. I can infer from this utterance that she does not take the proposal in question to be a theory at all. (36f) + (37a) + (37b) d. W knows that I can infer this from her use of qm and she has not stopped me from inferring that. (cp + I + Q) e. Therefore, by uttering (35), W implicates that Peter's new proposal is only a wannabe-theory. (37c) + (37d) Of course, this is only one possible interpretation of (35). In a dierent context the qm might indicate another implicature, deviant from the one inferred through (37), e. g., W might be referring to another scientist's diction, which would render a mq-reading instead of the sq-reading processed in (37). This leaves only one of the features listed in (28) to be addressed, namely cancelability. As we shall see, the analysis is less straight forward in this case, which is why we leave it for the following section, in which some worries about the conversational implicature view are discussed. Before that, let us take a closer look at a feature that is oen considered to be one of the most important characteristic of conversational implicatures, which is that they do not eect the truth conditions expressed by the utterance. According to the standard view, although a conversational implicature may change the felicity of an utterance, even dramatically, it does not aect the truth or falsity of that utterance. For instance, consider the classic example by Grice (1975: 51) himself: (38) A: I am out of petrol. B: There is a garage round the corner. In this short dialogue, B's answer is true i there is a garage round the corner. However, if the conversational implicature(s) of B's utterance, e.g. that the garage is open and has petrol to sell, were false, B's answer may be infelicitous, misleading or very mean. However, even if you could not buy petrol at the garage, and even if B knows that, B's utterance would still be true as long as there is a garage round the corner. Given that non-truth-conditionality is an important feature of conversational implicatures, we have to check whether mq, sq, and eq share this feature. If these quotations are non-truth-conditional we would get more evidence against treating them as literal meaning as a side eect. Let us start with some obvious cases: (39) Charles G. Taylor is "Innocent". (eq) Emphatic quotes are clearly not truth-conditionally relevant. Whatever makes the utterance (39) true in the given context makes the same utterance without qm true. The contribution of the quotation does not aect truth-conditions but rather expresses some additional meaning, e.g. that the writer is really convinced of Taylor's innocence. Instances of anaphoric mixed quotation alluding to a famous citation and scare quotes apologizing for a somehow deviant expression etc. are also obvious cases of non-truth conditional contributions of quotations. (40) a. Life has "certain anomalous features". b. At her university, many "geeks" would be pleased to help Mary with her computer. 2.4 Conversational Implicature 15 However, for other interpretations of quotational constructions like mq and sq with an ironic reading, it is harder to decide whether they go beyond the truth conditions of the quotational utterance or whether they manage to aect them. (41) a. Alice said that Quine is "dicult to understand". b. Ew! I hate to eat at Peter's. His bagels are always "fresh". It is hard to think of any procedure that can establish the truth-conditionality of the contribution by the quotes in (41) without any doubts. Here is something we could try: It seems as if the meaning of the quotations could be embedded under some higher operators or contexts like modal operators, conditionals or comparatives. (42) Modal opeartors: a. It is possible that/Maybe Alice said that Quine is "dicult to understand". b. It is possible that/Maybe Peter's bagels are "fresh". (43) Conditionals: a. If Alice says that life has "certain anomalous features", shemust knowQuine's work very well. b. If Peter's bagels are always "fresh", we should better avoid eating them. (44) Comparatives: a. It is more educated to say that life has "certain anomalous features" than that life has "certain anomalous properties". b. Eating "fresh" bagels is worse than eating tasty bagels. Examples like these seem to be troublesome for our attempt to treat the contribution by sq and mq as being conversationally implicated. However, we think that they actually only seem to be a problem. Even if the "whatever-it-is" conveyed by the quotational constructions in (42)–(44) aected the truth-conditions of the utterance in which it occurred, this does not mean that it cannot be conversationally implicated aer all. One of the hot topics in the recent debate concerning the semantics/pragmatics interface is the question whether conversational implicatures at least can contribute to the truthconditions of an utterance, i. e., whether they can be interpreted locally.19 Crucially, the constructions regularly discussed with regards to this questions are just the ones which seem to give to a truth-conditional eect of the quotations in (42)–(44). In such constructions, ordinary run-of-the-mill implicatures seem to be truth-conditionally relevant, too.20 (45) a. If Alice ate some of Peter's bagels, there are still some bagels le. b. If you drink three beers and drive home, you will be arrested by the police. c. To read some of Grice's papers is not as good as reading all of his papers. d. Driving home and drinking three beers is better than drinking three beers and driving home. We do not want to enter the discussion about pragmatic intrusion here. Regardless whether such cases are indeed cases in which conversational implicatures aect truthconditions or whether they could be explained by a more detailed investigation of the pragmatic mechanism at hand, the crucial point is that there are cases in which the 19 For discussion, cf. e.g. Blutner 1998, 2000, Levinson 2000, Recanati 2003, Sauerland 2004, King & Stanley 2005, Russell 2006, Geurts 2007. 20 For a comprehensive overview and detailed discussion of the intrusive construction, cf. Levinson 2000. 3. Some worries about the conversational implicature view 16 non-truth-conditionality of conversational implicatures is not as obvious as it is usually supposed to be. This is all we need to make our argument that the examples in (42)–(44) are not a serious objection to our attempt to analyze the contribution of quotations as being conversationally implicated. 3 Some worries about the conversational implicature view There is no free lunch, least of all in theories about quotational constructions in natural language. Accordingly, the conversational implicature view (civ) raises some worries as well. We consider the most challenging ones in the following sections. 3.1 Cancelability problems In § 2.4, we have seen that the eects indicated by means of qm exhibit the most central features of conversational implicatures as spelled out in (28). However, one important feature has not been addressed so far: the cancelability of conversational implicatures. At rst sight, this is where genuine counterexamples to civ, like e. g., (46)–(48), can be found. (46) a. C1: What did Coee & Bagels say about Peter's bagels? b. Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". +> Peter's bagels are what Coee & Bagels called "fresh". c. ?Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". But I don't want to convey that Coee & Bagels referred to them as fresh. (47) a. C2: Urgh, every time I eat a bagel at Peter's I get sick! b. Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". +> Peter's bagels are not fresh at all. c. ?Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". But I don't want to convey that they are not fresh at all. (48) a. C3: Peter's bagels are delicious! They are the best in town. b. Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". +> Peter's bagels are extraordinarily fresh. c. ?Well, Peter's bagels are always "fresh". But I don't want to convey that they are extraordinarily fresh. (46c)–(48c) suggest that the implicatures indicated by qm are not comfortably cancelable. But this is not necessarily problematic for civ, as there are other bona de cases of conversational implicatures that are not comfortably cancelable either, namely subtractive implicatures.21 Their characteristic feature is that the speaker wants to convey the implicature exclusively. The semantic content of the sentence is more or less irrelevant. Canceling subtractive implicatures leads to odd utterances, as there remains no relevant message the speaker rationally wants to convey. 21 We borrow the terminology for this distinction from Levinson (2000: 406, fn. 59). As an example, take relevance implicatures due to thematic switch: (i) a. C: What do you think of Professor Smith? b. The weather will be ne today. +> I do not want to answer this question. c. ?The weather will be ne today but I do not want to convey that I do not want to answer this question. 3.1 Cancelability problems 17 With this in mind, let us take a closer look at (46)–(48). It seems as if there are two ways in which one might think of canceling the eect indicated by qm. Firstly, one might want to cancel the indication that there is a marked interpretation to be derived (cf. the rst step of the proposed inference (36)): (49) a. Peter's bagels are always "fresh". b. +>W wanted to convey something more/other than that Peter's bagels are always fresh. c. ??Peter's bagels are always "fresh", but I do not want to convey anything more or other than that they are always fresh. This option appears to be the reason why canceling implicatures indicated by qm seems so problematic. Indicating the need to process a marked interpretation of the expression between qm and then trying to cancel that indication is certainly odd, but this oddity is due to the apparent disorder of the writer's intentions. With recourse to the notion of subtractive implicatures however, this problem can be explained without dismissing civ: Analogous to the the idea that subtractive implicatures only convey the implicature, qmmarked expressions only convey a non-standard interpretation. Thus, using qm without intending to convey anything more or other than the ordinary stereotypical meaning of the quoted expression would violate the i-principle without cause, and hence would give rise to the suspicion that the speaker has quit being cooperative. This interpretation of the apparent counterexamples provides us with something like use conditions for quotation marks: One should only use qm if something more or other than the standard interpretation of an expression without qm is to be communicated. The second option is that a writer (W) wants to cancel a specic implicature indicated by the use of qm without canceling the indication itself, i. e.,W wants to make sure the reader infers the intended "writer meaning". In this case, there is just the ordinary mechanism of cancelability at work, independent of any specic eects due to qm. For illustration, consider the following example: Given the context described in (47), W realizes that the reader is about to draw an unintended conclusion and thusW intends to cancel the implicature. At rst sight, (50d) still seems a bit odd, but consider some sequel like (50e) and the oddity will be considerably reduced. (50) a. C2: Urgh, every time I eat a bagel at Peter's I get sick! b. Peter's bagels are always "fresh". c. +> Peter's bagels are not fresh at all. d. ?Peter's bagels are always "fresh", but I do not want to say that they are not fresh at all. e. It's just that Coe & Bagels said they are fresh. Of course, according to this sequel the qm in (50b) still indicate the need to process an implicature, but it is certainly a dierent one, rather conveying an mq-reading. This suggests that it is possible to cancel a specic implicature, but not without giving rise to another one. Thus, even though the procedural meaning of qm-indicating that a non-standard interpretation has to be derived-cannot be canceled without giving rise to the suspicion that the writer disobeyed cp, the implicature itself can be overwritten by another one. Given, of course, that more information about the intentions of applying qm is provided. This process is constrained by the non-standard interpretations of an expression that are rationally admissible in a certain context of utterance keeping cp, i and q in mind. 3.2 Truth-conditional eects and grammaticality 18 To sum up: The eect produced by the application of qm meets the criteria of context-dependency, nondetachability, reinforceability and calculability. There are certain problems concerning cancelability but these can be explained away by clarifying the role that qm play in indicating the implicature: Firstly, since qm increase the markedness of an expression, they pragmatically block the stereotypical interpretation of that expression, i. e., for any expression they block the generalized i-implicature to the stereotypical interpretation. Secondly, in the particular context of utterance, the specic interpretation of the expression enclosed in qm has to be eshed out by means of a conversational implicature. Although the marking function of qm cannot be canceled without oddity, this does not apply for the implicature itself. 3.2 Truth-conditional eects and grammaticality The second worry is usually formulated, roughly, as follows: "How can the contribution qm make to the overall meaning of the sentence in which they occur be akin to conversational implicatures, given that in direct and pure quotation qm seem to have an impact on truth-conditions? Aer all, it is a central property of implicatures that they are not subject to truth-conditional evaluation." Here are some examples typically brought forward in order to substantiate that worry: (51) Context shis in direct quotation a. [Maryi ∶] Peterk said myi bagels are fresh. b. [Maryi ∶] Peterk said, "Myk bagels are fresh". (52) Meta-linguistic predication (mentioning) in pure quotation a. Boston is populous. b. "Boston" is disyllabic. c. Boston is disyllabic. It is obvious that in the two instances of (51) there is a reference shi of the personal pronounmy. The most natural readings of (51a) and (51b) are the ones indicated by the indices: in (51a)my refers to Mary, whereas in (51b) it refers to Peter. It is fairly common to attribute this shi to the qm used in (51b). In (52a) and (52c) Boston, it is said, refers to the capital of Massachusetts, whereas in (52b) it refers to the word Boston. According to a classical view on quotation – based on Quine's (1951) and Tarski's (1983) seminal texts – this eect is due to the qm. Quotation marks, it seems, are necessary for metalinguistic predication. In case they are "missing", as in (52c), the metalinguistic predicate takes the capital of Massachusetts as an argument, yielding an ungrammatical sentence. How do these points aect civ? The arguments usually proceed as follows: atc Argument from truth-conditions a. If qm indicate the need to derive conversational implicatures, then they should not have any inuence on truth conditions. b. However, as examples like (51) show, the occurence of qm does have an inuence on the truth-conditions of a sentence. c. Therefore, it is false that they indicate the need to derive conversational implicatures. ag Argument from grammaticality a. If qm indicate the need to derive conversational implicatures, then they 3.2 Truth-conditional eects and grammaticality 19 should not have any inuence on the grammaticality of a sentence. b. However, as examples like (52) show, the occurence of qm does have an inuence on the grammaticality of a sentence. c. Therefore, it is false that they indicate the need to derive conversational implicatures. If these arguments were correct, civ would lose a lot of it's plausibility as a general thesis on quotation marks. Even if one accepted civ for some types of quotation, e. g., mq, sq and eq, one could resonably reject it for dq and pq, thus embracing some kind of homonomy view on qm.22 We think this move is premature as there are arguments against the plausibility of atc as well as ag. In order to show this, we challenge the second premise of each argument, i. e., we reject (atc b) and (ag b). Let us take a look at (atc b): we neither want to deny that there is a context-shi in (51) nor that it has an inuence on the truth-conditions of the sentence. What we deny is that the context-shi is due to the application of qm. (53) suggests that punctuation marks and capital letters can indicate the context-shi just as good as qm can: (53) a. [Maryi ∶] Peterk said myi bagels are fresh. b. [Maryi ∶] Peterk said: Myk bagels are fresh. c. [Maryi ∶] Peterk said –myk bagels are fresh. As in (51), we think that the indices in (53b) and (53b) indicate the most natural reading, namely the one in which there is a reference shi of the pronounmy to the writer, i. e., Mary. As far as we know, no one defends the thesis that colons, dashes or capitals have a direct inuence on the truth-conditions of a sentence. We propose to take the same stance towards qm. The same disconnection between context-shis and quotation marks holds the other way round: There are quotational constructions without any context-shi. This is obvious in the case of scare quotes (54a) and emphatics quotes (54b). However, there are also instances of mixed quotation in which indexicals are interpreted with respect to the context of the reporting utterance and not with respect to the reported one. This can be illustrated by the examples (54c) and (54d) which are taken from Johnson (this volume). (54) a. C: Bill has mistaken Jane as Peter's sister. Some days later, Bill and Peter are waiting for Jane. When she is nally approaching, Peter utters to Bill: Look, "my sister" is coming. (sq) b. This could be "your new car"! (eq) c. In the words of Gandhi,"if I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide." (mq) d. As Abraham Lincoln said to the people of his time, "always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." (mq) These examples combined with the argument presented above, suggest that quotation marks are neither a necessary nor a sucient condition for a shied context. If this is correct, then atc collapses as the strong connection between qm and context-shis underlying its second premise does not hold. In the case of ag our rejection of the second premise is slightly more determined. We are not convinced by the claim that (52c) is an ungrammatical sentence. Although it is, of course, not a well formed expression in formal languages – for which Quine's and Tarski's theories were originally developed – it seems that the connection between qm 22 Cf. Gutzmann & Stei 2009 for a discussion (and rejection) of this position. 4. Conversational implicature and semantic input 20 and mentioning postulated by (ag b) is too strong for natural languages. Mentioning very oen occurs without qm. Consider the following examples: (55) a. My Name is Peter. b. The expression cats is a noun. c. Cats is a noun. (Saka 1998) (56) Scientists study the if. (Weinreich 1970: 94, aer Klockow 1980: 53) (57) Er wurde mit vielen Ahs und Ohs begrüsst. (Klockow 1980: 56) He was appreciated with many ahs and ohs. (58) Terebi bedeutet "television" [. . . ] (Klockow 1980: 62) Terebi means "television" [. . . ] Proponents of ag are committed to the rather contentious claim that all these utterances are ungrammatical. This does not seem very plausible, least of all in the very frequent case of utterances structurally equivalent to (55a). Thus, the examples suggest that ag is inplausible as the strong connection between qm and mentioning underlying its second premise does not hold in natural language. 4 Conversational implicature and semantic input Both atc and ag depend on very strong premises. If our criticism is correct, then these arguments need better support in order to convincingly rebut civ. There is, however, a more serious worry: According to Grice 1975, the derivation of conversational implicatures by means of cp and the conversational maxims needs fully propositional input. But, given civ, it is not clear what a proposition expressed by an utterance of (52b) or, to consult another example, of (59b) should look like. (59) a. A lobster is an animal. b. "Lobster" is a word. c. Lobster is a word. Apparently, whoever follows the arguments presented in the last paragraphs is committed to the claim that the word lobster has the same extension in all its occurences in (59). This seems to follow from the thesis that the specic reference is calculated by means of conversational implicature, i. e., in other words, on post-semantic level. But then, what exactly is the propositional content of lobster in (59b)? A qualied answer to that question depends on the way one understands the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Of course, we cannot give anything like a conclusive summary of the theoretical implementations of this distinction in this paper. For illustrative purposes, however, we will briey sketch civ against the background of Gricean and Neo-Gricean approaches. According to Grice's overall agenda, there are only two levels of meaning: what is said roughly corresponds to truth conditionally relevant semantic parts of the meaning of an utterance-with indexicals xed and ambiguities solved-and what is implicated corresponds to the pragmatic part not contributing to semantic truth conditions. Semantics has explanatory priority over pragmatics as the former serves as input for the latter. In other words, what is said is the basis for inferring what is implicated. Thus, the Gricean interpretation of civ seems to be committed to the claim that the proposition expressed by a sentence containing qm is equivalent to the one expressed by it qm free counterpart. The most natural interpretation seems to be that (59b) and (59c) expresses the proposition that lobsteranimal is a word from which the actual 4. Conversational implicature and semantic input 21 reference to the word lobster is inferred by means of cp and the conversational maxims. An unpleasant consquence of this move would be that most instances of direct and pure quotation would be false, even the ones in which qm are in fact applied. Another interpretation could run as follows: the question of whether an expression refers to an entity or to a word has to be disambiguated alongside with other disambiguation processes and the reference xing of indexicals, i. e., beforewhat is said is determined. This, however, would render the eects indicated by qm pre-propositional. Thus, they could no longer be regarded as conversational implicatures. Apparently, against the background of a classical Gricean picture of the semantics/pragmatics distinction, civ is not a very attractive position. Neo-Gricean accounts like Stephen Levinson's (2000) oer a more complex interpretation of the interaction of semantics and pragmatics on dierent levels of meaning. He expands the classical Gricean picture in allowing for the notion of pragmatic intrusion, according to which, roughly, pragmatic processes may play a role in determining the propositional content of an utterance. The idea is, roughly, as follows: The output of compositional semantics and indexical pragmatics does not always have fully propositional content. In this case, pragmatic processes, labeled Gricean pragmatics 1, are needed in order to arrive at truth evaluable content in the rst place. Only then, once we have what is said, the usual pragmatic processes (Gricean pragmatics 2) can be inferred as usual. Thus, Gricean pragmatics 1 inuences the proposition expressed while Gricean pragmatics 2 is post-propositional. 23 This architecture allows for a variety of incorporations of civ: (a) analogously to the "Gricean" analysis given above, qm contribute to Gricean pragmatics 2 only. But with Levinson's framework at hand, there are two further options: qm operate (b) completely on the level of pragmatics 1, or (c) qm operate on both levels. Against the background of this setup civ appears more promising. Particularly, the thesis of pragmatic processes contributing to what is saidmight be used to accommodate examples like (59). Option (b) could be combined with several proposals. First, there is the notion of local expansion developed by Kent Bach (1994). (60) a. California is a long state. b. California is a long name. Bach contends that the dierence between (60a) and (60b) "does not correspond to anything specic to the name California – one can use any expression to refer to that very expression," and suggests that mentioning is best regarded "as involving a special sort of local expansion: an expression 'E' is used as short for 'the expression "E"'. The hearer can recognize such a use when, for example, 'E' occurs in subject position and the predicate is not plausibly applicable to E." (Bach 1994: 153) civ could be regarded as a suggestion of what the process of recognizing such a use might look like. Although, of course, Bach refrains from calling this process a conversational implicature, coining the term impliciture instead, civ should able to transfer the spirit of his proposal to the Neo-Gricean picture. We could then say that the process of recognizing whether the particular reference of an expression is its regular extension or rather the word itself, is located on the level of pragmatics 1: it helps determining the propositional content of the utterance under consideration. Other possibilities include adopting Saka's (1998) view according to which orthographic, phonological or syntactic properties are genuine parts of the intension of an expression, or to side Pafel (2007), who treats pure quotation as a word formation process (a "generalized conversion"). In all cases the contribution indicated by qm would be 23 Cf. (Levinson 2000: 188) for an illustrative visualization. 5. Conclusion 22 located at the level pragmatics 1 since in Levinson's Neo-Gricean picture disambiguation between dierent intensions or dierent syntactic/morphological structures happens at this level. Option (c), according towhich both levels of pragmatics are involved, could be spelled out in terms of the derivation process we proposed in § 2.4. While the rst inference (36)- i. e., the indication that something more or other than the standard interpretation of the quotatum is intended by writerW-is located at the level pragmatics 1, the eshing out of the target of the quotation happens at pragmatics 2 in form of the second inference in (37). The latter could then uncontentiously be called a conversational implicature. Thus, in case one is willing to call processes occurring at the level of pragmatics 1 conversational implicatures, civmight become a plausible view aer all. 5 Conclusion The analysis of qm occurrences in natural language carried out in §§ 2.1–2.3 showed that it is problematic to le the contribution which qm make to the overall meaning of an utterance under literal meaning, conventional implicature or to presuppositions. In § 2.4 we suggested that the notion of conversational implicature is more promising. 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