Positively bitter and negatively sweet? Conventional implicatures and compatibility condition of emotive taste terms in Korean vs. English

The goal of this study is to propose a pragmatic analysis of what we call Emotive Taste Terms (ETTs) in Korean, compared to English. What makes Korean taste adjectives special is its multidimensional meaning: In descriptive dimension, (i) the literal meaning concerns the taste; or (ii) it can be extended toward the situation, yielding a figurative meaning. In expressive dimension, (iii) the choice of particular derivation form reflects the speaker's positive or negative emotional attitude; and (iv) another potential expressive meaning concerns honorification, thought it is not part of the meaning of ETTs. We thus propose that ETTs are a novel subcase of expressive elements, triggering Conventional Implicature. We show how the analysis of ETTs as a CI allows us to successfully derive subtle connotational differences amongst numerous variants. Finally, we show how the co-occurrence pattern of multiple expressives, ETTs and other expressives, within the sentence can be captured by Compatibility Condition Model.