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70-409: The etymology of the name suggests that it is spoken by piśācas , ( demons ). In works of Sanskrit poetics such as Daṇḍin 's Kavyadarsha , it is also known by the name of Bhūtabhāṣa , an epithet which can be interpreted either as a "dead language" (i.e. with no surviving speakers), or as "a language spoken by the dead" (i.e. ghouls or ghosts), the former interpretation being more realistic and

140-419: A derivative . A derivative is one of the words which have their source in a root word, and were at some time created from the root word using morphological constructs such as suffixes, prefixes, and slight changes to the vowels or to the consonants of the root word. For example unhappy , happily , and unhappily are all derivatives of the root word happy . The terms root and derivative are used in

210-475: A suffixed etymon that was once meaningful, Latin castrum ' fort ' . Reflex is the name given to a descendant word in a daughter language, descended from an earlier language. For example, Modern English heat is the reflex of the Old English hǣtu. Rarely, this word is used in reverse, and the 'reflex' is actually the root word rather than the descendant word. However, this usage is usually filled by

280-476: A comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word (and its related parts) carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its etymology . For languages with a long written history , etymologists make use of texts, particularly texts about the language itself, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form , or when and how they entered

350-406: A computer determines when two objects are different or not, is one of the most important tasks of computational pragmatics. There has been a great amount of discussion on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics and there are many different formalizations of aspects of pragmatics linked to context dependence. Particularly interesting cases are the discussions on the semantics of indexicals and

420-564: A development of the Fregean idea of assertion sign as formal sign of the act of assertion. Over the past decade, many probabilistic and Bayesian methods have become very popular in the modelling of pragmatics, of which the most successful framework has been the Rational Speech Act framework developed by Noah Goodman and Michael C. Frank , which has already seen much use in the analysis of metaphor, hyperbole and politeness. In

490-955: A high standard with the German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm . The successes of the comparative approach culminated in the Neogrammarian school of the late 19th century. Still in the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used etymological strategies (principally and most famously in On the Genealogy of Morals , but also elsewhere) to argue that moral values have definite historical (specifically, cultural) origins where modulations in meaning regarding certain concepts (such as "good" and "evil") show how these ideas had changed over time—according to which value-system appropriated them. This strategy gained popularity in

560-440: A possible referent, (ii) salience of the referent in the context of discussion (iii) an effort for unity of the parties involved, and finally, (iv) a blatant presence of distance from the last referent. Referential expressions are a form of anaphora. They are also a means of connecting past and present thoughts together to create context for information at hand. Analyzing the context of a sentence and determining whether or not

630-934: A reference game such that: L 1 : P L 1 ( s | u ) ∝ P S 1 ( u | s ) ⋅ P ( s ) S 1 : P S 1 ( u | s ) ∝ exp ⁡ ( α U S 1 ( u ; s ) ) L 0 : P L O ( s | u ) ∝ [ [ u ] ] ( s ) ⋅ P ( s ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&L_{1}:P_{L_{1}}(s|u)\propto P_{S_{1}}(u|s)\cdot P(s)\\&S_{1}:P_{S_{1}}(u|s)\propto \exp(\alpha U_{S_{1}}(u;s))\\&L_{0}:P_{L_{O}}(s|u)\propto [\![u]\!](s)\cdot P(s)\end{aligned}}} Pragmatics (more specifically, Speech Act Theory's notion of

700-415: A similar systematic ambiguity with the word "definable". The referential uses of language are how signs are used to refer to certain items. A sign is the link or relationship between a signified and the signifier as defined by de Saussure and Jean-René Huguenin . The signified is some entity or concept in the world. The signifier represents the signified. An example would be: The relationship between

770-498: A truth ' , and the suffix -logia , denoting ' the study or logic of ' . The etymon refers to the predicate (i.e. stem or root ) from which a later word or morpheme derives. For example, the Latin word candidus , which means ' white ' , is the etymon of English candid . Relationships are often less transparent, however. English place names such as Winchester , Gloucester , Tadcaster share in different modern forms

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840-670: Is associated with a single lost text, the Bṛhatkathā (The Great Tale), which seems to have existed less as an actual text than as a conceptual category signifying the Volksgeist , the Great Repository of Folk Narratives […] In any event, aside from this legendary work (which "survives" only in one Jain Maharashtri and several Sanskrit embodiments), Paishachi is irrelevant to the actual literary history of South Asia. There

910-605: Is called pragmatic competence . In 1938, Charles Morris first distinguished pragmatics as an independent subfield within semiotics, alongside syntax and semantics. Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J.L. Austin and Paul Grice . Pragmatics was a reaction to structuralist linguistics as outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure . In many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. Pragmatics first engaged only in synchronic study, as opposed to examining

980-536: Is considerable overlap between pragmatics and sociolinguistics , since both share an interest in linguistic meaning as determined by usage in a speech community. However, sociolinguists tend to be more interested in variations in language within such communities. Influences of philosophy and politics are also present in the field of pragmatics, as the dynamics of societies and oppression are expressed through language Pragmatics helps anthropologists relate elements of language to broader social phenomena; it thus pervades

1050-402: Is eating a cookie right now", describes events that are happening at the time the proposition is uttered. Semantic-referential meaning is also present in meta-semantical statements such as: If someone were to say that a tiger is a carnivorous animal in one context and a mammal in another, the definition of tiger would still be the same. The meaning of the sign tiger is describing some animal in

1120-438: Is heavily focused upon definite descriptions and referent accessibility. Theories have been presented for why direct referent descriptions occur in discourse. (In layman's terms: why reiteration of certain names, places, or individuals involved or as a topic of the conversation at hand are repeated more than one would think necessary.) Four factors are widely accepted for the use of referent language including (i) competition with

1190-616: Is known. The earliest of attested etymologies can be found in Vedic literature in the philosophical explanations of the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and Upanishads . The analyses of Sanskrit grammar done by the previously mentioned linguists involved extensive studies on the etymology (called Nirukta or Vyutpatti in Sanskrit) of Sanskrit words, because the ancient Indians considered sound and speech itself to be sacred and, for them,

1260-478: Is not readily obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning "to mark with blood"). Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word bead originally meant "prayer". It acquired its modern meaning through

1330-528: Is often traced to Sir William Jones , a Welsh philologist living in India , who in 1782 observed the genetic relationship between Sanskrit , Greek and Latin . Jones published his The Sanscrit Language in 1786, laying the foundation for the field of Indo-European linguistics . The study of etymology in Germanic philology was introduced by Rasmus Christian Rask in the early 19th century and elevated to

1400-565: Is one chapter (chapter 10) dedicated to Paisachi Prakrit in Prakrita Prakasha, a grammar book of Prakrit languages attributed to Vararuchi . In this work, it is mentioned that the base of Paisachi is Shauraseni language . It further goes on to mention 10 rules of transforming the base text to Paisachi. These are mostly rules of substitution of letters - Chapter 10 of Prakrita Pariksha Etymology Etymology ( / ˌ ɛ t ɪ ˈ m ɒ l ə dʒ i / , ET -im- OL -ə-jee )

1470-552: Is the most absurd, which derives this word from pons, and assigns the priests the title of bridge-makers. The sacrifices performed on the bridge were amongst the most sacred and ancient, and the keeping and repairing of the bridge attached, like any other public sacred office, to the priesthood. Isidore of Seville compiled a volume of etymologies to illuminate the triumph of religion. Each saint's legend in Jacobus de Varagine 's Legenda Aurea begins with an etymological discourse on

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1540-435: Is the study of the origin and evolution of words, including their constituent units of sound and of meaning , across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics , etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics , philology , and semiotics , it additionally draws upon comparative semantics , morphology , pragmatics , and phonetics in order to attempt

1610-548: The Bṛhatkathā was said to be popular. Talking of its existence, Pollock writes: Linguists have identified this as everything from an eastern Middle-Indic dialect close to Pali to a Munda language of inhabitants of the Vindhya Mountains […] In fact there is little reason to bother to choose […] Paishachi is the joker in the deck of South Asian discourses on language, having an exclusively legendary status, since it

1680-751: The Sthaviravādins used Paiśācī, and the Saṃmitīya used Apabhraṃśa . The most widely known work, although lost, attributed to be in Paiśācī is the Bṛhatkathā (literally "Big Story"), a large collection of stories in verse, attributed to Gunadhya . It is known of through its adaptations in Sanskrit as the Kathasaritsagara in the 11th century by Somadeva, and also from the Bṛhatkathā by Kshemendra . Both Somadeva and Kshemendra were from Kashmir where

1750-439: The performative ) underpins Judith Butler 's theory of gender performativity . In Gender Trouble , they claim that gender and sex are not natural categories, but socially constructed roles produced by "reiterative acting." In Excitable Speech they extend their theory of performativity to hate speech and censorship , arguing that censorship necessarily strengthens any discourse it tries to suppress and therefore, since

1820-406: The 20th century, and philosophers, such as Jacques Derrida , have used etymologies to indicate former meanings of words to de-center the "violent hierarchies" of Western philosophy . Pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as

1890-468: The Rational Speech Act, listeners and speakers both reason about the other's reasoning concerning the literal meaning of the utterances, and as such, the resulting interpretation depends, but is not necessarily determined by the literal truth conditional meaning of an utterance, and so it uses recursive reasoning to pursue a broadly Gricean co-operative ideal. In the most basic form of the Rational Speech Act, there are three levels of inference; Beginning from

1960-402: The adoption of " loanwords " from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding ; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such as "click" or "grunt"). While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change , it

2030-423: The analysis of morphological derivation within a language in studies that are not concerned with historical linguistics and that do not cross the language barrier. Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change , borrowing (i.e.,

2100-430: The field of linguistic anthropology . Because pragmatics describes generally the forces in play for a given utterance, it includes the study of power, gender, race, identity, and their interactions with individual speech acts. For example, the study of code switching directly relates to pragmatics, since a switch in code effects a shift in pragmatic force. According to Charles W. Morris , pragmatics tries to understand

2170-448: The first to make a comprehensive analysis of linguistics and etymology. The study of Sanskrit etymology has provided Western scholars with the basis of historical linguistics and modern etymology. Four of the most famous Sanskrit linguists are: These linguists were not the earliest Sanskrit grammarians, however. They followed a line of ancient grammarians of Sanskrit who lived several centuries earlier like Sakatayana of whom very little

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2240-644: The highest level, the pragmatic listener L 1 {\displaystyle L_{1}} will reason about the pragmatic speaker S 1 {\displaystyle S_{1}} , and will then infer the likely world state s {\displaystyle s} taking into account that S 1 {\displaystyle S_{1}} has deliberately chosen to produce utterance u {\displaystyle u} , while S 1 {\displaystyle S_{1}} chooses to produce utterance u {\displaystyle u} by reasoning about how

2310-533: The historical development of language. However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from signs existing purely in the abstract space of langue . Meanwhile, historical pragmatics has also come into being. The field did not gain linguists' attention until the 1970s, when two different schools emerged: the Anglo-American pragmatic thought and the European continental pragmatic thought (also called

2380-407: The idea of the performative , a type of utterance that performs the very action it describes. Speech Act Theory's examination of Illocutionary Acts has many of the same goals as pragmatics, as outlined above . Computational Pragmatics, as defined by Victoria Fromkin , concerns how humans can communicate their intentions to computers with as little ambiguity as possible. That process, integral to

2450-429: The indexical aspect would be the person who is speaking (refer above for definitions of semantic-referential and indexical meaning). Another example would be: A pure indexical sign does not contribute to the meaning of the propositions at all. It is an example of a "non-referential use of language." A second way to define the signified and signifier relationship is C.S. Peirce 's Peircean Trichotomy . The components of

2520-437: The language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method , linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced back to

2590-403: The latter being the more fanciful. Evidence which lends support to the former interpretation is that literature in Paiśācī is fragmentary and extremely rare but may have been once common. The Siddha-Hema-Śabdanuśāśana, a grammar treatise written by Rev. Acharya Hemachandraacharya, includes six languages: Sanskrit, the "standard" Prakrit (virtually Maharashtri Prakrit), Shauraseni, Magahi, Paiśācī,

2660-481: The latter is independent of the context (semantico-referential meaning), meaning the concept chair. Referring to things and people is a common feature of conversation, and conversants do so collaboratively . Individuals engaging in discourse utilize pragmatics. In addition, individuals within the scope of discourse cannot help but avoid intuitive use of certain utterances or word choices in an effort to create communicative success. The study of referential language

2730-465: The literal listener L 0 {\displaystyle L_{0}} will understand the literal meaning of u {\displaystyle u} and so will attempt to maximise the chances that L 0 {\displaystyle L_{0}} will correctly infer the world state s {\displaystyle s} . As such, a simple schema of the Rational Speech Act reasoning hierarchy can be formulated for use in

2800-475: The mat", the act is itself an utterance. That implies that a sentence, term, expression or word cannot symbolically represent a single true meaning; such meaning is underspecified (which cat sat on which mat?) and potentially ambiguous. By contrast, the meaning of an utterance can be inferred through knowledge of both its linguistic and non-linguistic contexts (which may or may not be sufficient to resolve ambiguity). In mathematics, with Berry's paradox , there arises

2870-438: The more easily others can surmise their meaning; the further they stray from common expressions and topics, the wider the variations in interpretations. That suggests that sentences do not have intrinsic meaning, that there is no meaning associated with a sentence or word, and that either can represent an idea only symbolically. The cat sat on the mat is a sentence in English. If someone were to say to someone else, "The cat sat on

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2940-426: The obvious, and actual "bridge-builder": The priests, called Pontifices.... have the name of Pontifices from potens , powerful because they attend the service of the gods, who have power and command overall. Others make the word refer to exceptions of impossible cases; the priests were to perform all the duties possible; if anything lays beyond their power, the exception was not to be cavilled. The most common opinion

3010-580: The origin of the Indo-European language family . Even though etymological research originated from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian . The word etymology is derived from the Ancient Greek word ἐτυμολογία ( ἐτυμολογία ), itself from ἔτυμον ( ἔτυμον ), meaning ' true sense or sense of

3080-512: The otherwise-unattested Cūlikāpaiśācī and Apabhraṃśa (virtually Gurjar Apabhraṃśa, prevalent in the area of Gujarat and Rajasthan at that time and the precursor of Gujarati language). The 13th-century Tibetan historian Buton Rinchen Drub wrote that the early Buddhist schools were separated by choice of sacred language : the Mahāsāṃghikas used Prākrit , the Sarvāstivādins used Sanskrit,

3150-421: The perspective view). Ambiguity refers to when it is difficult to infer meaning without knowing the context, the identity of the speaker or the speaker's intent. For example, the sentence "You have a green light" is ambiguous, as without knowing the context, one could reasonably interpret it as meaning: Another example of an ambiguous sentence is, "I went to the bank." This is an example of lexical ambiguity, as

3220-433: The practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads. The search for meaningful origins for familiar or strange words is far older than the modern understanding of linguistic evolution and the relationships of languages, which began no earlier than the 18th century. From Antiquity through the 17th century, from Pāṇini to Pindar to Sir Thomas Browne , etymology had been a form of witty wordplay, in which

3290-437: The problem of referential descriptions, a topic developed after the theories of Keith Donnellan . A proper logical theory of formal pragmatics has been developed by Carlo Dalla Pozza , according to which it is possible to connect classical semantics (treating propositional contents as true or false) and intuitionistic semantics (dealing with illocutionary forces). The presentation of a formal treatment of pragmatics appears to be

3360-406: The proposition is describing that Santa Claus eats cookies. The meaning of the proposition does not rely on whether or not Santa Claus is eating cookies at the time of its utterance. Santa Claus could be eating cookies at any time and the meaning of the proposition would remain the same. The meaning is simply describing something that is the case in the world. In contrast, the proposition, "Santa Claus

3430-423: The relationship between signs and their users, while semantics tends to focus on the actual objects or ideas to which a word refers, and syntax (or "syntactics") examines relationships among signs or symbols. Semantics is the literal meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied meaning of the given idea. Speech Act Theory , pioneered by J.L. Austin and further developed by John Searle , centers around

3500-706: The relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians . The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA). Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature , speech acts , relevance and conversation , as well as nonverbal communication . Theories of pragmatics go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics , which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning

3570-464: The relationship between the signified and the signifier. One way to define the relationship is by placing signs in two categories: referential indexical signs, also called "shifters", and pure indexical signs. Referential indexical signs are signs where the meaning shifts depending on the context hence the nickname "shifters." 'I' would be considered a referential indexical sign. The referential aspect of its meaning would be '1st person singular' while

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3640-460: The relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made in 1770 by the Hungarian, János Sajnovics , when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian (work that was later extended to the whole Finno-Ugric language family in 1799 by his fellow countryman, Samuel Gyarmathi ). The origin of modern historical linguistics

3710-510: The saint's name: Lucy is said of light, and light is beauty in beholding, after that S. Ambrose saith: The nature of light is such, she is gracious in beholding, she spreadeth over all without lying down, she passeth in going right without crooking by right long line; and it is without dilation of tarrying, and therefore it is showed the blessed Lucy hath beauty of virginity without any corruption; essence of charity without disordinate love; rightful going and devotion to God, without squaring out of

3780-402: The same language. Although they have the same etymological root, they tend to have different phonological forms, and to have entered the language through different routes. A root is the source of related words within a single language (no language barrier is crossed). Similar to the distinction between etymon and root , a nuanced distinction can sometimes be made between a descendant and

3850-418: The science of natural language processing (seen as a sub-discipline of artificial intelligence ), involves providing a computer system with some database of knowledge related to a topic and a series of algorithms, which control how the system responds to incoming data, using contextual knowledge to more accurately approximate natural human language and information processing abilities. Reference resolution, how

3920-612: The semantico-referential meaning of the utterances is unchanged from that of the other possible (but often impermissible) forms, but the pragmatic meaning is vastly different. J.L. Austin introduced the concept of the performative , contrasted in his writing with "constative" (i.e. descriptive) utterances. According to Austin's original formulation, a performative is a type of utterance characterized by two distinctive features: Examples: To be performative, an utterance must conform to various conditions involving what Austin calls felicity . These deal with things like appropriate context and

3990-408: The sixteenth century. Etymologicum genuinum is a grammatical encyclopedia edited at Constantinople in the ninth century, one of several similar Byzantine works. The thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea , as written by Jacobus de Varagine , begins each vita of a saint with a fanciful excursus in the form of an etymology. The Sanskrit linguists and grammarians of ancient India were

4060-412: The speaker's authority. For instance, when a couple has been arguing and the husband says to his wife that he accepts her apology even though she has offered nothing approaching an apology, his assertion is infelicitous: because she has made neither expression of regret nor request for forgiveness, there exists none to accept, and thus no act of accepting can possibly happen. Roman Jakobson , expanding on

4130-480: The state has sole power to define hate speech legally, it is the state that makes hate speech performative. Jacques Derrida remarked that some work done under Pragmatics aligned well with the program he outlined in his book Of Grammatology . Émile Benveniste argued that the pronouns "I" and "you" are fundamentally distinct from other pronouns because of their role in creating the subject . Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari discuss linguistic pragmatics in

4200-543: The supposed origins of words were creatively imagined to satisfy contemporary requirements; for example, the Greek poet Pindar (born in approximately 522 BCE) employed inventive etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch employed etymologies insecurely based on fancied resemblances in sounds . Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae was an encyclopedic tracing of "first things" that remained uncritically in use in Europe until

4270-427: The term etymon instead. A reflex will sometimes be described simply as a descendant , derivative or derived from an etymon (but see below). Cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Doublets or etymological twins or twinlings (or possibly triplets, and so forth) are specifically cognates within

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4340-421: The trichotomy are the following: These relationships allow signs to be used to convey intended meaning. If two people were in a room and one of them wanted to refer to a characteristic of a chair in the room he would say "this chair has four legs" instead of "a chair has four legs." The former relies on context (indexical and referential meaning) by referring to a chair specifically in the room at that moment while

4410-461: The two gives the sign meaning. The relationship can be explained further by considering what is meant by "meaning." In pragmatics, there are two different types of meaning to consider: semantic-referential meaning and indexical meaning. Semantic-referential meaning refers to the aspect of meaning, which describes events in the world that are independent of the circumstance they are uttered in. An example would be propositions such as: In this case,

4480-597: The use of referent expression is necessary is highly reliant upon the author/speaker's digression- and is correlated strongly with the use of pragmatic competency. Michael Silverstein has argued that "nonreferential" or "pure" indices do not contribute to an utterance's referential meaning but instead "signal some particular value of one or more contextual variables." Although nonreferential indexes are devoid of semantico-referential meaning, they do encode "pragmatic" meaning. The sorts of contexts that such indexes can mark are varied. Examples include: In all of these cases,

4550-464: The way; right long line by continual work without negligence of slothful tarrying. In Lucy is said, the way of light. Etymology in the modern sense emerged in the late 18th-century European academia, within the context of the wider " Age of Enlightenment ", although preceded by 17th century pioneers such as Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn , Gerardus Vossius , Stephen Skinner , Elisha Coles , and William Wotton . The first known systematic attempt to prove

4620-402: The word bank can either be in reference to a place where money is kept, or the edge of a river. To understand what the speaker is truly saying, it is a matter of context, which is why it is pragmatically ambiguous as well. Similarly, the sentence "Sherlock saw the man with binoculars" could mean that Sherlock observed the man by using binoculars, or it could mean that Sherlock observed a man who

4690-691: The words of the sacred Vedas contained deep encoding of the mysteries of the soul and God. One of the earliest philosophical texts of the Classical Greek period to address etymology was the Socratic dialogue Cratylus ( c.  360 BCE ) by Plato . During much of the dialogue, Socrates makes guesses as to the origins of many words, including the names of the gods. In his Odes Pindar spins complimentary etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch ( Life of Numa Pompilius ) spins an etymology for pontifex , while explicitly dismissing

4760-521: The work of Karl Bühler , described six "constitutive factors" of a speech event , each of which represents the privileging of a corresponding function, and only one of which is the referential (which corresponds to the context of the speech event). The six constitutive factors and their corresponding functions are diagrammed below. The six constitutive factors of a speech event Addresser --------------------- Addressee The six functions of language Emotive ----------------------- Conative There

4830-402: The world, which does not change in either circumstance. Indexical meaning, on the other hand, is dependent on the context of the utterance and has rules of use. By rules of use, it is meant that indexicals can tell when they are used, but not what they actually mean. Whom "I" refers to, depends on the context and the person uttering it. As mentioned, these meanings are brought about through

4900-453: Was holding binoculars ( syntactic ambiguity ). The meaning of the sentence depends on an understanding of the context and the speaker's intent. As defined in linguistics, a sentence is an abstract entity: a string of words divorced from non-linguistic context, as opposed to an utterance , which is a concrete example of a speech act in a specific context. The more closely conscious subjects stick to common words, idioms, phrasings, and topics,

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