This book breaks new ground towards an understanding of the mental processes involved in presupposition, the comprehension of information taken for granted.

This volume contains essays that explore explicit and implicit communication through linguistic research. Taking as a framework Paul Grice s theories on what is said, the contributors explore a number of areas, including: the boundary between semantics and pragmatics; the concept of implicit communication; the idea of the logical form of our assertions; the notion of conventional meaning; the phenomenon ofdeixis, which refers to when an utterance require context in order to be understood fully; the treatment of definite descriptions; and the different kinds of pragmatic processes. "

This volume contains essays that explore explicit and implicit communication through linguistic research. Taking as a framework Paul Grice s theories on what is said, the contributors explore a number of areas, including: the boundary between semantics and pragmatics; the concept of implicit communication; the idea of the logical form of our assertions; the notion of conventional meaning; the phenomenon of"deixis," which refers to when an utterance require context in order to be understood fully; the treatment of definite descriptions; and the different kinds of pragmatic processes. "

The result is an advanced debate featuring broad empirical coverage of the issues, as well as an informed discussion of the connections between a Compositional Semantics and a Pragmatic Theory of Implicit Communication, in light of the empirical data coming from Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics.