ABSTRACT
An utterance is said to generate an implicature if it conveys something that goes beyond what is literally said – if hearers form a pragmatic interpretation of the utterance that differs from the literal one. Common examples are scalar implicatures, where a weaker claim is interpreted as the denial of a stronger one on the same scale. For example “Some politicians take bribes” pragmatically implies “Not all politicians take bribes”, even though “some” means at least one and is logically compatible with “all”.
