Grice on the projection problem for implicatures

I like to think he has L. J. Cohen's early remarks on this ("Grice on the logical particles of natural language") when Grice expands on what we may call the alleged projection problem for implicatures.

Grice writes:

"The question which at this point

particularly best not only me

but various other philosophers

as well was the question

whether

it is or is not required that

A NONCONVENTIONAL IMPLICATURE

should always possess maximal scope."

"When a sentence which

USED IN ISOLATION

standardly carries a certain

implicature, is

EMBEDDED

in a certain linguistic context,

for example, appears within the

scope of the negation-sign,

must the embedding operator,

namely the negation-sign,

be interpreted

ONLY AS WORKING ON THE CONVENTIONAL

import of the embedded sentence, or may

it on occasion

be interpreted as

governing not the

conventional import

but the nonconventional implicatum

of the embedded sentence?"

----

Grice goes on

"Only IF an embedding operator

MAY, on occasion, be taken

as governing NOT the conventional

import, but the nonconventional

implicatum standardly carried by the

embedded sentence can the First Version

of my account of such linguistic

phenomena as conditionals

[cfr. Wilson's early example, adapted, "If Bush knows the war is over, the war is over"]

and definite descriptions

be made to work. The denial

of a conditional needs to be treated

as denying not the conventional import

but the standard impicatum attaching to

an isolated use of the embedded sentence."

----

"It certainly does NOT seem reasonable

to subscribe to an absolute BAN on the

possibility that an embedding locution

may govern the standard

nonconventional implicatum rather than

the conventional import of the embedded sentence."

Grice's illustration:

"If a friend were to tell me that he had spent the

summer cleaning the Augean stables"

--- metaphorically meaning, "I've been working hard, I tell you"--

"it would be unreasonable"

or pretentious

"of me to respond that he could not

have been doing that since he spent the

summer in Seattle and the Augean stables are

not in Seattle."

or

"You're not the cream in my coffee; you're not liquid"

---

Grice goes on:

"But where the limits of a licence

may lie which allows us to relate

embedding operators to the

standard implicata rather than conventional

meaning"

God knows.