implicato

Implicato is a term used in linguistic pragmatics to refer to the implicit content associated with an utterance—the set of inferences that listeners derive beyond the explicit proposition. The implicato captures pragmatic effects shaped by context, background knowledge, and communicative goals, and it is intended to complement the literal meaning of a sentence rather than replace it.

In discussions of implicato, researchers aim to distinguish the explicit semantic content from the content that is pragmatically licensed in a given situation. The concept is related to implicature but is often framed to emphasize a stable, discourse-relevant layer of meaning that can be referenced in analysis of discourse structure, relevance, and speaker intention. The implicato may include conventional implicatures, situational inferences, and expectations about how the conversation should proceed.

Formally, some proposals describe the implicato of an utterance U in context C as a set of propositions {p1, p2, …} that become available to inference when C is taken into account, even though these propositions are not entailed by the literal semantics of U alone. The content of the implicato can vary with context and can be strengthened or suppressed by prosody, gesture, topic focus, or politeness considerations.

Applications of the concept appear in analyses of dialogue systems, natural language understanding, and discourse studies, where recognizing the implicato helps explain user intent and conversational dynamics beyond explicit statements. Related concepts include implicature, presupposition, and relevance theory. Notes in the literature emphasize that the implicato is a pliable, context-bound layer of meaning rather than a fixed semantic entity.