Theoretical Approaches to Implicit Meaning, Presupposition, and Implicature

 This article examines the theoretical foundations of implicit meaning, presupposition, and implicature as central categories of contemporary pragmatics and discourse analysis. The discussion draws on the major contributions of H. P. Grice, Robert Stalnaker, Stephen C. Levinson, George Yule, Dan Sperber, and Deirdre Wilson. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between linguistic encoding, contextual information, common ground, speaker intention, and inferential interpretation. The analysis shows that presupposition is relatively stable and is often activated by identifiable linguistic triggers, whereas implicature depends more strongly on communicative context and pragmatic reasoning. Examples from English and Uzbek demonstrate how similar types of implicit content may be generated through different formal resources. The article argues that implicit meaning should be treated as a broader category that includes, but is not limited to, presuppositional and implicatural content.