Yes, “conversational implicature” is the more precise term for that, but I used “connotation” instead because I thought it was close enough and it is more widely known among LW readers. (I thought that the main difference was that the latter is usually applied to words and the former to sentences; is there another important one?)
There’s at least one that cannot be considered a consequence of implicatures attaching to sentences (or maybe phrases): You can cancel implicatures (“you can do this or that—in fact, you can do both”), but not connotations.
It’s instructive to ask the reverse question: Is there any important commonality between implicatures and connotations other than that neither is part of the literal meaning? I think the answer is no.
Yes, “conversational implicature” is the more precise term for that, but I used “connotation” instead because I thought it was close enough and it is more widely known among LW readers. (I thought that the main difference was that the latter is usually applied to words and the former to sentences; is there another important one?)
There’s at least one that cannot be considered a consequence of implicatures attaching to sentences (or maybe phrases): You can cancel implicatures (“you can do this or that—in fact, you can do both”), but not connotations.
It’s instructive to ask the reverse question: Is there any important commonality between implicatures and connotations other than that neither is part of the literal meaning? I think the answer is no.
I had been primed by this post when choosing the word connotation, but I didn’t remember Footnote 0.