Analysis Of Embedded Conversational Implicature From Perspective Of Meaning Holism

The concept of conversational implicature was first proposed by Grice（1975）in Logic and Conversation.He mainly discusses the classification and characteristics of conversational implicature.Since then,conversational implicature has entered a systematic and in-depth study,such as the two principles of conversational implicature proposed by Horn（1984）and the three principles of conversational implicature proposed by Levinson（1987）.In the study of conversational implicature,embedded implicature has not received much attention.Domestic research is in its infancy and still needs to be explored.The author reviews the grammatical view,pragmatic analysis,semantic analysis and complementary analysis,and finds that scholars try to explain the embedded implicature from different theoretical models,but so far,various methods of explaining the embedded implicature have different degrees of limitations.Firstly,embedded implicature is the implicature at the sub-sentencial level,while conversational implicature comes from independent and complete speech acts and appears at the sentencial level.Therefore,it is very important to analyze the generation mechanism of embedded implicature.Secondly,scholars such as Levinson（2000）,Chierchia（2006）and Huang Yan（2014）put forward that the properties of embedded implicature are divided into content and form.The properties of content are combinability,cancellability,compulsion,projectivity and universality,and the properties of form are infinity and contrast.The author believes that the above properties contribute to the study of embedded conversational implicature to a certain extent,but their content is not comprehensive and slightly lacking.From the perspective of meaning holism,this paper aims to explore an optimal solution to the interpretation of embedded implicature,analyze the properties of embedded implicature,and make a supplement on the basis of the original attributes.In the process of interpretation,it takes new properties of embedded implicature as the link and combines properties with Gricean theory of conversational implicature to reveal the essence of embedded conversational implicature,and try to resolve the contradiction between embedded implicature and Gricean theory of conversational implicature.In the meaning holism,Quine（1981）proposed the criticism of “Two Dogmas”,the dichotomy of “analysis synthesis” and reductionism.This thought is consistent with the holism of embedded implicature,so it has more explanatory power in the interpretation of embedded implicature.Meaning Holism is the thesis that the relations of a certain kind（or kinds）that obtain among the expressions of a given natural language（all of these expressions,or many of them）are constitutive for linguistic expressions to mean what they do.These relations are sometimes referred to as “concepts” or “inferences”.Based on the quantitative implicature,information implicature and manner implicature proposed by Levinson,logic operator embeds into the above three implicature and triggered by specific components,so as to divide the types of embedded implicature.Through the analysis of examples with the theoretical advantages of meaning holism,we can get the trigger position and generation mechanism of embedded implicature in sentences,and then explore the properties of embedded implicature and supplement the original properties.From the perspective of meaning holism,this paper mainly adopts the research methods of qualitative analysis and comparative analysis.The research findings are as follows:1.Through the comparison between meaning holism and semantic combination principle,it is found that only meaning holism can produce conversational implicature,because meaning holism brings the implicit meaning in conversation into its theoretical category,and the conversational implicature produced by semantic combination principle does not accord with the speaker’s intention.Through the analysis of examples,meaning holism can trigger conversational implicature at the sentencial level and sub-sentencial level.The same embedded clause can still generate implicature in a complete sentence.This study holds that analyzing embedded conversational implicature from the perspective of meaning holism is the best solution.2.Embedded clauses can also generate implicature in complete sentences,which shows that embedded conversational implicature is globality,but at the sentencial level,it generates holistic conversational implicature with weak meaning;The conversational implicature generated at the sub-sentencial level has strong meaning.In the same discourse,it produces two kinds of conversational implicature with strong and weak semantics,which reflects the polysemy of embedded conversational implicature.Therefore,globality and polysemy are the supplement to the embedded conversational implicature properties.3.The embedded implicature can be produced at both the sentencial level and the sub-sentencial level.The embedded implicature at the sentencial level is holistic and can be directly regarded as Grice conversational implicature;The local conversational implicature generated in the sub-sentence is embedded implicature.In this study,embedded implicature has globality,so the essence of embedded implicature is Grice conversational implicature triggered by globality.Embedded conversational implicature enriches Gricean theory of conversational implicature and is a supplement to Gricean theory of conversational implicature.This paper has theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it is conducive to expanding the application scope of meaning holism and providing a new perspective for the interpretation of embedded conversational implicature;In practice,embedded implicature provides enlightening thinking for the study of conversational implicature and opens up new ideas for the research direction of pragmatics.