Discussion Groups / English Usage / September 2009

"Imply" is a general term that subsumes a lot
of different ways that propositions can be
conveyed without necessarily being said.

There are terms for all of these ways, which,
by the way, were developed mostly by philosophers,
not linguists, though we use them when we're trying
to be very precise and accurate.  Which we need
to be when talking to philosophers.

"Implicate", as Guy points out, means to
communicate a proposition by use of Implicature.

"Implicature" refers to the kind of implication
provided by such things as indirectness, e.g,

   Gosh, it's cold in here.

conveys a "Conversational Implicature" that
is equivalent to requesting someone to shut
the window or turn up the heart.

It certainly isn't Entailed,
the way "Bill killed Dave"
entails that Dave died,
nor is it Presupposed,
the way "Carter used to be President"
presupposes that Carter is not president now.

Nor any other of the several ways of
conveying propositions that aren't
actually stated.  There are names for
all of these ways that have been teased
out so far, and no doubt more to come
as more are discovered.

This, by the way, is an example of
Pragmatics, not Semantics, and
certainly not grammar of any sort.

Pinker is just trying to use the technical
language carefully and precisely. This
is not necessarily a Bad Thing.

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
  "Truthful words are not beautiful;
    beautiful words are not truthful.
    Good words are not persuasive;
    persuasive words are not good."
                                - Lao Zi