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    The analysis of the relationship between forms and functions of language is commonly called discourse analysis, which encompasses the notion that language is more than a sentence-level phenomenon. A single sentence can seldom be fully analyzed without considering its context. We use language in stretches of discourse. We string many sentences together in interrelated, cohesive units. In most oral language, our discourse is marked by exchanges with another person or several persons in which a few sentences spoken by one participant are followed and built upon by sentences spoken by another. Speakers formulate representations of meaning not just from a single sentence but also from referents in both previous sentences and following sentences.

Consider the following:

A. Got the time?

B. Ten fifteen.

Waiter: More coffee?

Customer: I’m okay.

Parent: Dinner!

Child: Just a minute!

    In so many of our everyday exchanges, a single sentence sometimes contains certain presuppositions that are not overtly manifested in surrounding sentence-level surface structure, but that are clear from the total context. All three of the above conversations contained such presuppositions (how to ask what time of day it is; how to say “no more coffee”; how to announce dinner and then indicate one will be there in a minute). Without the pragmatic contexts of discourse, our communications would be extraordinarily ambiguous.

(H. Douglas Brown. Principles of language learning and teaching 5th edition ed.Longman, 2000. Adaptado)