Abstract

In natural language interpretation conversational implicatures play an important role. Following Grice there are different approaches that try to approach the main ideas of Grice and to give a proper treatment of the corresponding examples and phenomena: relevance theory, neoGricean pragmatics, and Levinson's presumptive meaning approach are the most important ones. Optimality theoretic pragmatics can be seen as a general framework for formalizing the underlying notions and mechanisms. Moreover, this theory provides an excellent framework for investigating the idea of fossilization. Generally, this idea refers to the transfer from pragmatically determined information (expressed by conversational implicatures) into the formal system of language. The present paper gives a concise introduction into conversational implicatures and fossilization using the optimality-theoretic framework. The examples I discuss in this paper are mostly taken from the field of lexical pragmatics.