Revisiting the typology of pragmatic interpretations

Pragmatic inferences are essential to understanding speakers' communicative intentions. I here revisit the typology of pragmatic inferences and minimally revise it by incorporating into it additional distinctions. Inspired by Recanati's (1991 [1989]) availability principle, I develop Bach's (1994b) indirect-quote test into a battery of faithful-report tests, distinguishing between inferences on discoursal grounds. The result is that what were initially analyzed as conversational implicatures by Grice are split not only into the relevance-theoretic (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]) explicated and implicated inferences but also into strong implicatures, background assumptions (Searle 1978), and truth-compatible inferences (Ariel 2004). In addition, Grice's (1989) "as if to say" representations, which I define as provisional explicatures, are restricted to what I term two-tier uses (as in ironic and playful uses, but not in "normal" nonliterality cases).