implicature

n. in linguistics, a proposition that is not stated explicitly in an utterance and is not a condition for its truth but can nevertheless be inferred from it. The types of implicature recognized in pragmatics and discourse analysis go beyond those recognized as valid in formal logic. For example, the statement Mary is my dad’s wife would imply in most contexts Mary is not my mother, even though the first proposition cannot be said to entail the second. Compare presupposition. See also conversational inference; indirect speech act. —implicative adj.

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Psychology term of the day

February 1st 2025

sensory evoked potential

a type of evoked potential recorded from electrodes placed on the scalp, overlying the cerebral cortex, in response to sensory stimulation. The stimuli may be visual, auditory, somatosensory, gustatory, or olfactory, and the mapping of sensory evoked potentials in the cortex helps to locate the different sensory areas. See also auditory evoked potential; visual evoked potential. Compare motor evoked potential.