Interpreting disjunctive sentences: insights from Neo-Gricean and Sauerland’s perspectives on scalar implicatures and ignorance inferences

This article discusses the conversational implicatures that arise from the use of a disjunctive sentence such as 'Fanny invited Greta or Alex'. This sentence can be interpreted either inclusively, i.e. 'Fanny invited Greta or Alex and possibly both', or exclusively, i.e. 'Fanny invited Greta or Alex but not both'. The inclusive reading, according to the standard literature, corresponds to the basic meaning of disjunction, while the exclusive reading is argued to come about as a Gricean implicature. Another class of implicature related to disjunction are ignorance inferences, which convey the speaker’s ignorance of the truth of either disjunct, i.e. 'The speaker does not whether Greta was invited' and 'The speaker does not whether Alex was invited'. We will discuss two theoretical frameworks that account for how these inferences are generated: the Neo-Gricean approach, and Sauerland’s account (2004). Although the Gricean and Neo-Gricean approaches are fundamental to the theory of implicature derivation, Sauerland’s account offers a more suitable model for computing complex disjunctive sentences, such as embedded implicatures.