Discourse Coherence Relations Research Articles

Anticipating explanations in relative clause processing

We show that comprehenders’ expectations about upcoming discourse coherence relations influence the resolution of local structural ambiguity. We employ cases in which two clauses share both a syntactic relationship and a discourse relationship, and hence in which syntactic and discourse processing might be expected to interact. An off-line sentence-completion study and an on-line self-paced reading study examined readers’ expectations for high/low relative-clause attachments following implicit-causality and non-implicit causality verbs ( John detests/babysits the children of the musician who…). In the off-line study, the widely reported low-attachment preference for English is observed in the non-implicit causality condition, but this preference gives way to more high attachments in the implicit-causality condition in cases in which (i) the verb’s causally implicated referent occupies the high-attachment position and (ii) the relative clause provides an explanation for the event described by the matrix clause (e.g., … who are arrogant and rude). In the on-line study, a similar preference for high attachment emerges in the implicit-causality context—crucially, before the occurrence of any linguistic evidence that the RC does in fact provide an explanation—whereas the low-attachment preference is consistent elsewhere. These findings constitute the first demonstration that expectations about ensuing discourse coherence relationships can elicit full reversals in syntactic attachment preferences, and that these discourse-level expectations can affect on-line disambiguation as rapidly as lexical and morphosyntactic cues.

Inter-sentential anaphora and coherence relations in discourse: a perfect match

Hobbs [Hobbs, J.R., 1979. Coherence and coreference. Cognitive Science 3, 67–90] claims that the interpretation of inter-sentential anaphors ‘falls out’ as a ‘by-product’ of using a particular coherence relation to integrate two discourse units. The article argues that this is only partly true. Taking the reader’s perspective, I suggest that there are three stages in invoking and implementing a given coherence relation to integrate two discourse units when updating a given discourse context. Interleaved with these are two distinguishable levels in the assignment of reference to the anaphor(s) in the second unit: first, through a search for evidence for the appropriateness of a given anticipated relation, the reader will provisionally assign a referent to the anaphor(s) in the second unit via the semantic structure within the relation’s definition (this would correspond to Hobbs’s original thesis); and second, in coming to a final decision as to the applicability of the coherence relation(s), the anaphor(s) will receive a full, expanded interpretation. This in turn will serve to actually implement the coherence relation initially assumed. In more general terms, the article aims to pinpoint the precise nature of the interactions between the invocation and implementation of given coherence relations and the functioning of anaphors in non-initial units, in processing multi-propositional texts.

Nonverbatim Captioning in Dutch Television Programs: A Text Linguistic Approach

In the Netherlands, as in most other European countries, closed captions for the deaf summarize texts rather than render them verbatim. Caption editors argue that in this way television viewers have enough time to both read the text and watch the program. They also claim that the meaning of the original message is properly conveyed. However, many deaf people demand verbatim subtitles so that they have full access to all original information. They claim that vital information is withheld from them as a result of the summarizing process. Linguistic research was conducted in order (a) to identify the type of information that is left out of captioned texts and (b) to determine the effects of nonverbatim captioning on the meaning of the text. The differences between spoken and captioned texts were analyzed on the basis of on a model of coherence relations in discourse. One prominent finding is that summarizing affects coherence relations, making them less explicit and altering the implied meaning.

Pragmatic markers and discourse coherence relations in English and Catalan oral narrative

This article explores the role that markers play in the pragmatic discourse structure of Catalan and English oral narratives. It is argued that their meaning is directly related to the sort of coherence relation that they establish with preceding and following propositions and discourse segments, centring the discussion on four discourse structures/components: ideational, rhetorical, sequential and inferential. The aim is to show the textual form-pragmatic function relationship by means of specific lexical units placed at specific parts of the narrative. The hypothesis held in this article is that pragmatic markers help in the organization of narrative segments and that their semanticopragmatic traits make them appropriate for their use in specific segments.

Coherence Relations, Ellipsis and Contrastive Topics

It has been observed (Kehler 1996, 2000, 2002) that ellipsis resolution processes interact with the inference processes underlying the establishment of coherence relations in discourse. For example, gapping only co-occurs with the coherence relation of Resemblance. In this paper I show that the reason why certain ellipsis processes only co-occur with certain types of coherence relations does not lie in the (im)possibility to reconstruct the missing material. Rather, ellipsis processes differ in their relation to the topic of the sentence. The way in which different coherence relations construct their topic (i.e. as a contrastive topic or as a non-contrastive topic) restricts the types of ellipsis they can occur with. This conclusion is supported by observed differences between gapping and subject deletion in Dutch SGF-constructions.