Concession and Linguistic Inference

  • Published : 2002.02.01

Abstract

In this paper it has been proposed that concession should be analysed as involving scalar implicatures and that an alternative set of situations have to be assumed to account for the the relative nature of likelihood of event occurrence. This paper also claims that the notion of likelihood is the basis of the corresponding pragmatic inference and a universal quantification effect. Unexpectedness, which is conceptually tied to concession, on the other hand involves the same kind of pragmatic inference but presuppose the existence of an alternative set of individuals instead of an alternative set of situations.

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