A Study Of The Role Of Context In Language Comprehension

Context is the environment by which language exists, functions and develops. It restrains language and determines language meaning. It can be classified into two major types as linguistic context and non-linguistic context. The study of language meaning has a long history. Scholars from different fields of philosophy, psychology, linguistics and so on have made a great effort on the study of meaning.In this thesis we should first discuss the contributions made to language comprehension by modern linguistic theories. Then we shall study language comprehension from a conventional point of view, that is to explain how language knowledge affects language comprehension. Because language knowledge is insufficient for full interpretation of language meaning, we need to study context. After that we discuss the knowledge of context. At last we analyse the main function of context in language comprehension. We conclude that context determines the fate of language.