Implicature and Exercises - Hàm ngôn và bài tập

Xin tôn trọng bản quyền tác giả © Mr. Dinh Huy và http://EnglishSemanticsOfficial.blogspot.com/

Implicature is used by Grice (1975) to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as from what the speaker literally says. Implicature is an additional conveyed meaning. 

(tạm dịch: Hàm ngôn được dùng bởi Grice (1975) để giải thích điều người nói có thể ngụ ý, đề nghị, hoặc giải nghĩa, từ những gì người nói theo nghĩa đen. Hàm ngôn là nghĩa được chuyển tải thêm vào.)

The hearer © Azul din

Exercise: Give a possible implicature of B's utterance in each of the following situations.

1. A: “Do you feel hungry?”

B: “I’ve not eaten for 3 days.”

(B’s response violent the maxim of the relevance.)

(B does not say whether he feels hungry or not.)

→B is cooperative so that A may infer that B is very hungry.

2. Professor 1: “Is Tom a good student ?”

Professor 2: “He has beautiful handwriting and is neatly dressed.”

(B’s response violates the maxim of relevance and quantity.)

(B does not say whether Tom is a good student or not.)

→B is cooperative so that A may infer that B is not a good student.

3.A: “Do you know where Billy Bob is?”

B: “Well, he didn’t meet me for lunch as he was supposed to.”

(B’s response violates the maxim of relevance and quantity.)

(B doesn’t say where Billy Bob and provides the information that the hearer doesn’t need.)

→B is cooperative so that A may infer that B doesn’t know where Billy Bob.