A Case Study on the Paradox of Free Choice Permission Katrin Schulz Abstract: In sum, the thesis pursuits two different but strongly connected aims. First, it tries to account for a notorious problematic observation concerning the interpretation of certain sentences of English: the paradox of free choice permission. More particularly, the intention is to account for this observation in terms of Grice's theory of conversational implicatures. Secondly, before this theory can be used first it has to be made precise. Here, the intention is to provide a (part-wise) formalization using results from non-monotonic logic. We start with a more extended discussion of the phenomenon of free choice permission. The aim is to get a good understanding of the phenomenon that has to be described. Also two classical accounts to the problem are discussed that do not only constitute central pillars in the literature on this topic but also build the fundament of the approach developed here: the extensive discussion of free choice permission by Hans Kamp and the proposal of Ede Zimmermann. Afterwards, a part-wise formalization of Grice's theory of conversational implicatures is proposed. Building on the work of Halpern & Moses a pragmatic notion of entailment is introduced that is intended to describe the conversational implicatures due to the first submaxim of Quantity and parts of the maxim of Quality out of Grice's inventory of conversational maxims. The inferences obtained this way essentially come down to Gazdar's clausal implicatures. We show that such a notion of entailment together with an assumption of competence of the speaker - and here we build strongly on Zimmermann - allows the interpreter to derive the free choice permission. Then we discuss the proposal of the previous section. As it turns out, the approach has to fight with one central shortcoming: it over-generates. Some ideas where to look for a solution of this problem will be introduced but a detailed investigation has to wait for another location. We finish with a section on conclusions and outlines of further research.