Different prominences for different inferences

Abstract

Abstract The distinction between prominent and nonprominent representations is highly relevant for the online processing of utterances. This distinction, I argue, is not only applicable to explicit linguistic material. Different pragmatic inferences come with different degrees of discourse prominence too. First, inferences that form part of the explicature (or ‘what is said’) function almost as if they were explicit, and are then more prominent than implicated inferences. But interestingly, various inferences considered Particularized conversational implicatures too show a differential degree of discourse prominence. I distinguish between Implicated premises (necessary but not discourse-prominent) and Implicated conclusions (necessary and prominent), between various strong Implicated conclusions (all of them necessary) which can nonetheless be more or less prominent, and between Truth-compatible inferences (neither necessary nor prominent) and all other pragmatic inferences.