Is Hyperbole a Scalar Inference?

Abstract This article is concerned with the interpretation of hyperbolic statements. In the first part, we contend that Kao et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci 111:12002–12007, 2014)—to our knowledge, the first (and only) attempt to derive hyperbolic interpretations using formal methods—is unsuccessful. In the second part, we put forth a conjecture—roughly, a sentence S can be interpreted hyperbolically as meaning S − , where S − is weaker than S , only if S − is a scalar alternative of S . We substantiate this conjecture by a series of novel empirical observations.