Natural Language Processing · TEE · papers
Q1D · Pragmatics and discourse
Solved final paper · December 2025
Actual final examination · 2 December 2025 · 100 marks · 3 hours
Answer
Pragmatic analysis interprets an utterance using the situation, speaker intention, shared knowledge and conversational expectations. Discourse analysis studies how multiple utterances form a connected text or conversation.
| Basis | Pragmatic analysis | Discourse analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Intended meaning in context | Relationships and coherence across utterances |
| Useful information | Speaker, listener, place, time and common knowledge | Previous sentences, entities, topics and rhetorical relations |
| Typical tasks | Interpret requests, implicatures and deixis | Resolve references and analyse cohesion, coherence and discourse structure |
| Example | “It is cold here” may be a request to close a window | “Riya bought a book. She read it.” links She to Riya and it to book |
In “Can you pass the salt?”, literal syntax asks about ability; pragmatic interpretation usually identifies a polite request. In “The road flooded. Therefore, the school closed,” discourse analysis identifies a cause–result link between the sentences.
The levels interact: resolving “she” across a conversation may require both earlier text and real-world context. They are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Yaad rakho: Pragmatics: bolne ka intention. Discourse: sentences ka connection.