Formal characterization of explicature and its consequences to explicating in Chinese

Abstract

This paper studies the notion of explicature and the process of explicating in relevance-theoretic pragmatics against the background of the minimalism versus contextualism controversy. It attempts to give a formal definition of explicature, which has not yet been spelt out in the literature. It then applies the formal characterization to the study of a range of related cases in Chinese grammar. The findings are used to re-examine the minimalism/contextualism debate. We argue that explicature theory does not by nature favour either of the two sides.