implikaatit

Implikaatit are a linguistic concept referring to implied meanings that accompany utterances but are not part of their literal content. In Finnish linguistics, implikaatit (plural of implikaatti) describe what a speaker suggests or conveys beyond the explicit words, relying on context, shared knowledge, and communicative goals.

They belong to pragmatics, the study of how people use language in real situations. Unlike entailments, which are truth-conditions that follow from what is said, implicatures are inferences listeners draw from the utterance and context. Implicatures can be sensitive to context and can be canceled or altered by new information, whereas many conventional aspects of meaning remain stable across contexts.

There are several kinds of implikaatit. Conversational implicatures arise from the cooperative principle and maxims of conversation (for example, the maxim of quantity or relevance). An example is the statement “Some students passed,” which often implicates that not all students passed. Conventional implicatures, in contrast, are linked to particular words or constructions and carry implied meanings that persist across contexts, such as the contrast implied by the word “but” or the emphasis created by “even.”

In practice, implikaatit help explain how speakers convey politeness, sarcasm, or stance, and how listeners infer speaker intent. They are important in discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication, translation, and natural language processing, where distinguishing literal content from implied meaning affects interpretation and interaction.