Normal state implicature

Abstract

In the right situation, a speaker can use an unqualified indefinite description without being misunderstood. This use of language, normal slate implicature, is a kind of conversational implicature, i.e. a non-truth-functional context-dependent inference based upon language users' awareness of principles of cooperative conversation. I present a convention for identifying normal state implicatures which is based upon mutual beliefs of the speaker and hearer about certain properties of the speaker's plan. A key property is the precondition that an entity playing a role in the plan must be in a normal state with respect to the plan.