ABSTRACT

As pointed out at the end of the last chapter, the sentence has traditionally been (implicitly or explicitly) regarded as the upper limit of grammatical analysis. But human languages developed to satisfy socio-cultural (and hence communicative) human needs, not to fit into grammarians’ frameworks. In real life, nobody utters isolated and unrelated sentences. Typically, sentences are a part of discourse and text. The terms “discourse” and “text” used here are for a linguistic or grammatical analysis, and not a philosophical analysis (especially of the type practised by some modern “Continental” philosophers).