A Uniform Treatment of Pragmatic Inferences in Simple and Complex Utterances and Sequences of Utterances

Abstract

Drawing appropriate defeasible inferences has been proven to be one of the most pervasive puzzles of natural language processing and a recurrent problem in pragmatics. This paper provides a theoretical framework, called ``stratified logic'', that can accommodate defeasible pragmatic inferences. The framework yields an algorithm that computes the conversational, conventional, scalar, clausal, and normal state implicatures; and the presuppositions that are associated with utterances. The algorithm applies equally to simple and complex utterances and sequences of utterances.