(I’m also constantly confused how “or” usually means “xor” in English.)
Not quite. The denotation of “A or B” is normally “A or B”, though it often has the connotation “but not both”. “A and/or B” has the same denotation but lacks that connotation. See the first sentence of the fifth paragraph of this.
The term connotation is usually used for what distinguishes the meanings of “dog” and “cur”. The exclusivity of “or” seems to be a rather different thing and is commonly regarded as a conversational implicature (which explains why it disappears under negation, for instance). Whether that’s really correct is somewhat debatable, especially because nobody really knows what the denotation of “or” actually is; but calling it connotation strikes me as misleading.
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.
Not quite. The denotation of “A or B” is normally “A or B”, though it often has the connotation “but not both”. “A and/or B” has the same denotation but lacks that connotation. See the first sentence of the fifth paragraph of this.
The term connotation is usually used for what distinguishes the meanings of “dog” and “cur”. The exclusivity of “or” seems to be a rather different thing and is commonly regarded as a conversational implicature (which explains why it disappears under negation, for instance). Whether that’s really correct is somewhat debatable, especially because nobody really knows what the denotation of “or” actually is; but calling it connotation strikes me as misleading.
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.