Conventional implicature revisited

Abstract I suggest a new approach to terms famous for introducing conventional implicatures, “even”, “but”, and so on. I call these expressions View on Content Devices or VCDs. First, I focus on the nature of VCD's semantic contribution to sentences. I then ignore the specifics of each VCD and sketch my own account, using the Reflexive–Referential framework Perry recently introduced (2001) in semantics. Second, I examine the semantic behaviour of “but” and distinguish it from “and”. I then show the fruitfulness and explanatory power of the Reflexive–Referential framework. Intuitively, VCDs are very simple expressions, and my suggestion is designed to capture that prima facie simplicity.