Gricean views of exhaustification

As a puzzle for the Gricean view of exhaustification, Fox (2014) describes a game show scenario where the maxim of Quantity is arguably canceled, but the use of a disjunctive sentence still invites an exclusivity inference. Westera (2022) proposes that this puzzle can be solved in an Attentional Pragmatics, where the Gricean maxims are supplemented with Attention-maxims. In this commentary, we identify a gap in Westera’s solution and propose two possible amendments. We point out that under either amendment, the resulting proposal requires a departure from Grice’s original view of exhaustification as arising from a clash between the maxims of Quantity and Quality.