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<Paper uid="P92-1009">
  <Title>CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES IN INDIRECT REPLIES</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper we present algorithms for the interpretation and generation of a certain kind of conversational implicature occurring in the following type of conversational exchange. One participant (Q) makes an illocutionary-level request 2 to be informed if p; the addressee (A), whose reply may consist of more than one sentence, conversationally implicates one of these replies: p, &amp;quot;-p, that there is support for p, or that there is support for &amp;quot;-p. For example, in (1), assuming Q's utterance has been interpreted as a request to be informed if A went shopping, and given certain mutual beliefs e.g., that A's car breaking down would normally e sufficient to prevent A from going shopping, and i We wish to thank Kathy McCoy for her comments on this paper.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> ~i.e., using Austin's (Austin, 1962) distinction between locutionary and il\]ocutionary force, Q's utterance is intended to function as a request (although it need not have the grammatical form of a question) that A's reply is coherent and cooperative), A's reply is intended to convey, in part, a 'no'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  (1) Q: Did you go shopping?  A: a. My car~s not running.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> b. The timing belt broke.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Such indirect replies satisfy the conditions proposed by Grice and others (Grice, 1975; Hirschberg, 1985; Sadock, 1978) for being classified as particularized conversational implicatures. First, A's reply does not entail (in virtue of its conventional meaning) that A did not go shopping. Second, the putative implicature can be cancelled; for example, it can be denied without the result sounding inconsistent, as can be seen by consider- null ing the addition of (2) to the end of A's reply in (1.) (2) A: So I took the bus to the mall.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5">  Third, it is reinforceable; A's reply in (1) could have been preceded by an explicit &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; without destroying coherency or sounding redundant. Fourth, the putative implicature is nondetachable; the same reply would have been conveyed by an alternative realization of (la) and (lb) (assuming that the alternative did not convey a Manner-based implicature). Fifth, Q and A must mutually believe that, given the assumption that A's reply is cooperative, and given certain shared background information, Q can and will infer that by A's reply, A meant 'no'. This paper presents algorithms for calculating such an inference from an indirect response and for generating an indirect response intended to carry such an inference.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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