A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Differently from conversational implicatures, conventional implicatures are entailed by lexical and constructional meanings. Indeed, conventional implicatures are not context-dependent, namely their generation does not depend from the context. Conventional implicatures are closely related to the lexical meaning of the relevant linguistic expression. In the implicature exemplified below, the concept of being fat is felt in contrast with the concept of being agile and a skilled dancer.

                             tl

         woman ix_a fat but dance good_at

         ‘The woman is very fat, but she is good at dancing.’

Regardless of the context, conventional implicatures are attached to a specific linguistic meaning and for this reason it is not possible to cancel them by adding further sentences, such as in the case of conversational implicatures (PRAGMATICS 7.1). For instance, it is not possible to cancel the contrast between being fat and being agile by adding a sentence which specifies that this contrast does not hold (i.e. ‘The woman is fat, but she dances well and no contrast exists between the fact that she is fat and that she dances well’).