Prof Dr Michiel van Lambalgen

Abstract:  In this thesis a successful formalization of implicatures using extended logic programming is given. This provides a cognitively more interesting account than traditional formalizations. Focus lies on the class of Q-implicatures, but I-implicatures are dealt with as well. The thesis also includes an equivalence proof between this approach and one using circumscription, such as sketched in Van Rooij and Schulz [2004]. The main conclusion is the difference in complexity between ?exhaustivity ? and scalar implicatures, the latter type is harder to compute. This is evidence in favor of the psycholinguistic theory that (scalar) implicatures are only computed in the right context, since they require extra processing. Acknowledgment I would like to thank my supervisor Robert van Rooij for developing the subject of this thesis with me while I only had a vague thought about what I wanted. More importantly, I thank him for helping me with this thesis even while it took