Embedded Implicatures? Remarks on the debate between globalist and localist theories

Abstract

Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009) present experimental evidence that embedded implicatures are not systematically available and conclude that localist theories of implicatures cannot be maintained. I argue that this conclusion can be strengthened by showing that their findings cannot be reconciled with a localist theory even when the latter is supplemented with a formal way to predict when an embedded implicature will be preferred, as suggested in Chierchia, Fox & Spector 2008.