Justificación del problema

What does it mean for an implicature to be able to be interpreted at the phrase level? Let me repeat the basic formulation: A phrasal implicature occurs in cases where a speaker uses a proper part of a sentence to mean something other than the semantic content of this proper part. In a typical case, the proper part which generates the phrasal implicature also does the triggering by itself. How does this happen?

For slurs, as an example, identifying the trigger is easy, since this type of implica- ture is conventionally caused by certain expressions, such as “boche”, which we have discussed earlier. Conversational implicatures, however, typically are not triggered conventionally. Thus, context is the only candidate to do the heavy lifting. Roughly speaking, contextual information includes every type of background information in

1_{Of course, it cannot be said that metaphorical uses of names are overlooked by every theorist.}

For instance, Burge (1973, p.429), in his discussion of the predicative uses of names, acknowledges the metaphorical use and distinguishes it from other predicative uses.

the interpretation of a sentence. This information could originate from the ongoing discourse or from the other features of the situation.

Here is my suggestion for contextual triggering of phrasal implicatures: If a phrasal meaning is unexpected by the hearer in a certain discourse context, then the hearer might look for other salient features associated with the denotation of the unexpected phrase and try to make sense of the unexpectedness by substituting this salient feature (and possibly some others) with the meaning of the unexpected phrase in the original utterance content.2

At this point, I should make two clarifications on the notion of unexpectedness. First, there might be non-linguistic types of unexpectedness, such as seeing some- one in an unexpected place. They can also trigger alternative explanations. But my focus will be linguistic unexpectedness, in which a part of a clause is consid- ered unexpected and this unexpectedness triggers an alternative interpretation for (mostly) the trigger or (rarely) some other part of the utterance. Another thing I should emphasize is that not all triggers cause alternative explanations. I con- sider unexpectedness to be a cognitive notion which comes in degrees. Some low level of unexpectedness, for instance, might not trigger an alternative interpretation. The hearer might accept the utterance meaning as it is. Therefore, I assume that unexpectedness should exceed a threshold in hearer’s mind in order to trigger an alternative interpretation.

A phrase might be perceived as unexpected for different reasons. It is plausible to think that when one asks a question she (most of the time) predicts a set of possible answers. A phrase might not fit in the hearer’s predictions for various reasons. Consider the following examples:

(3) How to Russell a Frege-Church (The title of one of David Kaplan’s articles) (4) No 10 states David Cameron will deliver on Scottish devolution promise. (5) This textsmellsof translation. (A direct translation of a Turkish saying which

is used for poorly translated texts.)

(6) JANE: I have a terrible cold. I need a Kleenex. (Wilson and Sperber 2012, p.19)

In(3), a proper name “Russell” occurs in a transitive verb position. Is this construc- tion syntactically ill-formed? If it is, then this explicit ill-formedness might trigger

2_{I will qualify the unexpectedness requirement in a moment. It is not always the unexpectedness}

an alternative explanation of what the speaker is trying to say.3 _{The unexpected-}

ness might also arise at the level of semantics. According to one influential theory of semantics, namely the functional application approach of Heim and Kratzer (1998, p.29), the semantic type of names is hei, and that of transitive verbs is he,he, tii. So, a transitive verb takes an entity as an argument and outputs a function from entities to truth values. Obviously, in this framework a name cannot take anything as an argument, which seems to be the cause of semantic unexpectedness in(3).

(4) is an example of metonymy in which unexpectedness arises from “No 10” being the subject of the sentence. The sentence clearly does not say anything about a number. The hearer will easily fix this unexpectedness by finding a relevant interpretation for this phrase, such as the UK government. In (5) the trigger is a category mistake, since a text is not something odorous. Finally, (6) exemplifies loose talk in which the irrelevance of a specific brand triggers an alternative for “Kleenex” which could be something like a piece of tissue. In this example, the speaker does not exactly need a Kleenex; she utters the name of this brand, but what she means is just a piece of tissue paper.

The above are typical examples of triggering in metaphorical utterances. There are however some cases in which the triggering mechanism is more complicated than

(3)-(6). Cases in point are sentences usually called “sentential metaphors” in which the entire sentence is claimed to receive a metaphorical interpretation. Consider the following example:

(7) A spectre is haunting Europe

That is the first part of the opening sentence ofThe Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, which expresses how communism is perceived by its opponents all over the Europe. There is no syntactic or semantic deviance in this sentence. How is that sentence recognized as metaphorical? I think the general context helps in this case. Since words such as “spectre” and “haunting” are not part of the usual vocabulary of a political text, they signal an alternative interpretation. However, so-called sentential metaphors seem to differ from other metaphors in their interpretation. I will discuss their interpretation in Section4.5.5.

There are other cases which can be seen sentential metaphors but which seem to be more complicated. Consider this sentence:

(8) I grabbed my clothes, stumbled to the toilet and threw up over and over until the only thing left in my stomach was guilt. (Guardian - 14 Jan 2016)

It seems difficult to determine the trigger here. At first one might find “guilt” unexpected and think of it as a trigger for metaphorical interpretation. However, it does not seem possible to interpret this phrase metaphorically in this sentential context; it is clearly used literally. Thus, the interpreter should look elsewhere to find the cause of unexpectedness. After some reflection one can see that the phrase“stomach” (or “the only thing left in my stomach”) is the trigger which needs to be interpreted metaphorically. This metaphorical utterance has an interesting structure. The metaphorically used part is “the only thing left in my stomach”. However, since this part is seemingly compatible with the beginning of the sentence (“ I grabbed my clothes, stumbled to the toilet and threw up over and over until”), determining it as a trigger requires some effort. Here, the stomach seems to represent or symbolize the mind; that is the hidden metaphor is something like “mind is stomach”. I call this type of metaphorical use “metaphorical metonymy” and discuss it in Section4.5.5.

White (1996) claimed that sentential metaphors are generated by the conflation of two sentences. In fact he argued that the conflation of two sentences is essential to creating metaphors. In other words metaphor is essentially a sentential linguistic phenomenon in his view. I will argue against his view in Section4.5.7, but as for the triggering question, I should accept that a hearer might need to process the sentence more than once in order to recognize a complicated trigger as in (8). Notice that the determination of the trigger after processing the sentence as a whole does not mean that the implicature is clausal. By processing the whole sentence the trigger phrase is determined, and the phrasal meaning that is implied by the trigger phrase is calculated. Thus, the implicature in question will be a phrasal one.

I do not want to claim that unexpectedness is a necessary condition for trigger- ing metaphorical interpretation. Ironically, sometimes the expectation of metaphor mainly triggers it. For example, metaphors are heavily expected when one reads poetry or a poetical prose. Readers look for alternative interpretations for poetical phrases.4

Another example of metaphor expectation is the case in which a speaker begins her metaphorical utterance with the expression “metaphorically speaking”. When this expression occurs in a sentence, the hearer knows that the speaker wants him to look for metaphors in the rest of the sentence.

Of course there are also cases in which neither expectedness nor unexpectedness

4_{Searle (1993, p.103) makes a similar point: “There are various other [other than the defective-}

ness of the utterance – my addition] clues that we employ to spot metaphorical utterances. For example, when reading Romantic poets, we are on the lookout for metaphors, and some people we know are simply more prone to metaphorical utterances than others.”

help, such as so-called twice-apt metaphors.5 _{If someone utters “Oslo is a cold city”}

to describe the physical and psychological impact of the city on her, then it might be very difficult for her hearers to grasp both of the meanings. In this case she should signal her intention in some other way such as putting emphasis on “cold”.

Let me summarise my claims about unexpectedness. In a typical case, the inter- pretation of a phrasal implicature is triggered by the unexpectedness of the content of the phrase. In order to determine what the speaker means at the clausal level, the phrasal implicature should replace the content of the trigger phrase in the original utterance content; the rest of the utterance content remains intact. We can express this idea schematically as follows: Suppose that the content of the utterance is in the form of _pa Fs b_q. If we assume that F causes the unexpectedness and the speaker impliesG by utteringF, then the phrasal implicature will beG. But, as mentioned before, a phrasal implicature brings about a derivative clausal implicature. In our schematic example, the clausal implicature will be in the in the form of _pa Gs b_q;

G replacesF and the rest of the original utterance content is copied.6

I called this process “typical” for two reasons. First, there are the above- mentioned twice-apt metaphor cases, in which usually no constituent of the content of the utterance is considered unexpected. In these cases, the phrasal implicature is supposed to be signalled by intonation or by some other contextual clue. Secondly, this process assumes an ordinary discourse. Metaphor use in other contexts, such as poetry or fiction, might diverge from the standard picture in some respects. Read- ing a literary work, one normally expects more metaphorical uses than an ordinary discourse. Thus, expectation can also trigger metaphorical interpretation in certain contexts.

There are, of course, several types of unexpectedness. What I have in mind, as I mentioned above, is linguistic unexpectedness. Linguistic unexpectedness occurs when a proper part of a clause does not match syntactically or semantically with the rest of the clause. Surely one might say unexpected things in a discourse. For instance if a lecturer says strange things such as “I’m quitting my job and moving to Hawaii” or “I’m a CIA agent sent to spy on the UK Government”, those utterances would surprise the students. But these are different from the linguistic

5_{Hills (1997) coined the expression “twice-apt”.}

6_{Let me make some clarifications about the notation I am using: (i) I use double quotation}

marks to mention words and phrases. (ii) I italicise expressions to refer to their contents. I also italicise expressions to emphasize them. The context (I hope) will make clear what the italics indicate. (iii) All variables are italicised as is the usual practice. (iv) Non bold capital letters are the variables for the phrases that generate phrasal implicatures. (v) Bold capital letters are the variables for both the contents of the phrases that generate phrasal implicatures and the features that are associated with these contents.

unexpectedness I have in mind. In these examples, no proper part of these utterances fails to match with the rest of the utterance or with the discourse topic.