Finally, another very important general motivation for the recent merest in pragmatics is the possibility that significant functional explanations can be offered for linguistic facts.

It is important, therefore, that there be sufficiently well-defined pragmatic principles and structures to make such functional explanations precise and testable.

The concept of implicature, therefore, seems to offer some significant functional explanations of linguistic facts.

The authors did not provide any functional explanation of these observations.

This is far from the 'functional explanation' later impugned by Carl Hempel and others.

Mr. Batra's functional explanation of his cyclical forecast is less than realistic.

"Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition."

Hurford, J. (1990) Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition.

First, although it may be true that functional explanations of the kind he discusses remain incomplete until we understand the mechanisms which sustain them, they may nevertheless be explanatory.

Biology is already reduced (mostly via functional explanation), and psychology looks promising.