ABSTRACT
The use of lan guage in context comes under the domain of pragmat ics. As shown in Fig. 7.1, the meaning of an utter ance may be regarded as jointly determined by its pro pos itional mean ing, the con text in which it occurs, the background general know ledge that the listener brings to the interpretat ive process, the focus of lin guistic attention, and the men tal model that the listener devel ops as a series of utter ances are integ rated. Chapters 3 to 6 were con cerned with the stages involved in com put ing a propos i tional meaning from spoken input. This chapter will focus on the other four sources of inform a tion shown in Fig. 7.1. In Chapter 8, we move on to con sider another aspect of prag matics: use of social context.
