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The Pragmatic Aspects of the Sentence

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Introduction

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology. Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any preexisting knowledge about those involved, and other factors. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to …show more content…

Of particular linguistic significance are indirect speech acts, where the form of a given sentence (e.g. the yes-no question in *Can you pass the salt?*) belies the actual force (here, a request for action) characteristically conveyed by the use of that sentence. [6; 4]

Pragmatic interpretation of sentences

Pragmatics is often defined as the theory of the way we use language. Theories of pragmatics then link the language and its user while semantics links the syntactical entities of language with their meanings. One may think that a semantics for a language is a sufficient basis for the capacity to use that language. Through having knowledge of an appropriate semantics a competent would user know the meanings of words and sentences and this should be enough to use the language properly. The reality appears to be much more complicated. [7; 16] Very often, especially where common-sense language is concerned, sentences are uttered in a way which seems to have no relation to their meaning. Let us consider such example. Somebody asks you:
e.g. Would you be so kind to tell me what time is it? Somebody can recognize that it is a yes-no question. She/he has at hand an

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