A Study Of The Embedded Scalar Implicature From The Perspective Of Grammar-Pragmatics Interaction

According to the conversational implicature theory proposed by Grice(1989),conversational implicature refers to the meaning conveyed by the speaker who deliberately flouts the cooperation principle(or its maxims).It is inferred based on independent and complete speech acts,and only appears at the sentence level,which belongs to post-propositional acts.In recent years,however,scholars have discovered the existence of embedded scalar implicature.Because it relates to conversational implicature,this kind of embedded(conversational)implicature has attracted extensive attention from linguists at home and abroad.Current research on embedded(conversational)implicature mainly focuses on the phenomenon of embedded scalar implicature triggered by specific lexical expressions scalar item,for instance,some.Currently,domestic and international linguists mainly explore the embedded scalar implicature and put forward their different interpretation mechanisms respectively from two perspectives: grammar and pragmatics.In general,the grammatical approaches view the embedded scalar implicature as a part of the lexical and grammatical content of the sentence,which does not need to be derived from pragmatic inference;while the pragmatic approaches consider it as an enriched interpretation based on contextual inference.Currently,no final conclusion has yet been reached on which is right and which is wrong.Therefore,this research aims at a corpus-based study of the embedded scalar implicature triggered by quantifier “some”,so as to examine the naturally occurring syntactic structure and discourse information of embedded scalar implicature as exhaustively as possible.By comparing and observing the differences between the sentences that generate and do not generate this special implicature,this thesis specifically explores:(1)What are the grammatical triggers of embedded scalar implicature?(2)What are the contextual constraints of embedded scalar implicature?(3)What is the real construal mechanism of embedded scalar implicature?This research finds that the construal of embedded scalar implicature relies on the interaction between grammatical and pragmatic factors.To be more specific,partitive some of-construction and contrastive construction tend to trigger the embedded scalar implicature interpretation,while the generation of the embedded scalar implicature largely depends on the speaker’s epistemic modality and intention at last.In addition,embedded scalar implicature provides theoretical enlightenments for the research of the conversational implicature,which may lead us to reclassify “what is said” and “what is implicated” and provides a novel view of pragmatics.At the same time,it can also provide inspiration for the English teachers’ teaching activities.