Understanding discourse requires comprehenders to infer the relations between clauses and sentences. These discourse relations are thought to be constrained by discourse structure. This study investigates how the Right Frontier Constraint (RFC), a structural constraint that predicts how discourse units can attach to each other, affects discourse coherence expectations triggered by implicit causality (IC) verbs during online comprehension. Using a self-paced reading paradigm, we measured readers' processing times on explanatory continuations following IC verbs with either subordinating or coordinating intervening sentences. Our findings indicate that IC-driven expectations can be held across a subordinating intervening unit but are blocked by a coordinating unit, suggesting that the RFC rapidly influences how readers anticipate upcoming discourse. These results provide new evidence for the RFC and suggest that it is applied early enough to shape expectations during discourse processing.

During discourse processing, comprehenders are driven by the (implicit) questions raised in the discourse as it unfolds. By raising “why” questions, implicit causality (IC) verbs bias comprehenders to seek out causal explanations which drive discourse coherence. However, not every question can be actively pursued. We propose an incremental Question-under-Discussion (QUD) framework in which QUDs that drive discourse expectations cannot be raised by questions that are trapped in ‘discourse islands’ such as relative clauses. This framework is tested by manipulating the position of “why” questions raised by IC verbs in a comprehension task and a self-paced reading study. The results reveal that “why” questions raised by IC verbs can only generate QUDs that enhance offline causal inference rates and guide online causal discourse expectations to material that is at the same or lower structural level, supporting the framework’s core predictions. This work contributes to discourse processing research by introducing an incremental QUD framework that is supported by our experimental results, namely that discourse embedding affects discourse-level inferences and expectations.

In some discourses, a given inference would be natural at one point, but impossible at the next. We focus here on such cases with inferences of temporal and causal order usually described as ambiguities of discourse coherence. The fact that these inferences come and go over the course of a discourse raises challenges for their representation within theories of dynamic semantics: representations must either include coherence-related meaning in a way that can be selectively edited later, or else persistently underspecify it. As theories of humans' actual cognitive states, these approaches make different predictions for patterns of difficulty during real-time comprehension. Borrowing a standard assumption from sentence processing, true incremental representation should be associated with some detectable "Regret" when a comprehender meets input incompatible with a previously-preferred analysis. Previous work on the processing of coherence has failed to demonstrate Regret, leaving underspecification on the table. In a new study, we probe further, by constructing discourses with a strong, verified bias towards an initial inference, and testing the effects of cues which can reverse this inference early in the discourse, or much later. We observe that these discourses provoke Regret in self-paced reading, in particular when the critical cue comes late, in a discourse unit following the initial ambiguity. Among many formal accounts which could explain this pattern, we elaborate in particular on a version of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory where analyses are ranked at the offset of each discourse unit.

A longstanding debate about conjunction concerns so-called ‘asymmetric’ interpretations with additional causal or temporal inferences. Some theories posit a semantic component of conjunction as part of their explanation (e.g. Gómez Txurruka 2003). In this paper, we explore an unstated prediction of such accounts: that the specific semantics of conjunction might vary (i) across languages, and (ii) across conjunction strategies within a language. Drawing on data from A’ingae (an indigenous language of Ecuador) and Gizey (an indigenous language of Cameroon and Chad) respectively, we show that both predictions are met, arguing that such semantic variation is constrained in ways anticipated by theories of discourse coherence such as SDRT (Asher & Lascarides 2003).

This paper explores the evidence for ‘discourse reanalysis,’ the hypothetical case where an initial interpretation of a sequence of discourse units must be revised due to further context. If discourse reanalysis does occur, our representations may need to permit selective non-monotonic update of discourse-pragmatic meaning like coreference and coherence (Las carides and Asher 1993; Haug 2014). But a simpler alternative looms: fully-underspecified representations, which could maintain all grammatical discourse interpretations, without any intermediate selection or ranking to later be reanalyzed. To see which approach best models the representations used in actual incremental comprehension, we turn to psycholinguistic evidence. Discourse reanalysis should be associated with momentary difficulty akin to ‘gar den path’ effects in syntactic processing. But previous studies looking for this difficulty in discourse processing have been equivocal. Here, we investigate a case missing from those previous experiments, a joint ambiguity of coreference and coherence, for which we show robust initial preferences. Then, in a self-paced reading experiment, we observe evidence for difficulty when a preferred interpretation must be abandoned. We take this to solidify the empirical basis for discourse reanalysis as a consequence of incremental composition at the discourse level, and discuss two ways this might be accomplished, depending on one’s approach to the interface between logical representation and real-time comprehension.

Scalar adjectives pertain to various domain scales and vary in intensity within each scale (e.g. certain is more intense than likely on the likelihood scale). Scalar implicatures arise from the consideration of alternative statements which could have been made. They can be triggered by scalar adjectives and require listeners to reason pragmatically about them. Some scalar adjectives are more likely to trigger scalar implicatures than others. This phenomenon is referred to as scalar diversity. In this study, we probe different families of Large Language Models such as GPT-4 for their knowledge of the lexical semantics of scalar adjectives and one specific aspect of their pragmatics, namely scalar diversity. We find that they encode rich lexical-semantic information about scalar adjectives. However, the rich lexical-semantic knowledge does not entail a good understanding of scalar diversity. We also compare current models of different sizes and complexities and find that larger models are not always better. Finally, we explain our probing results by leveraging linguistic intuitions and model training objectives.

Through imaginative engagement readers of fiction become, to an extraordinary extent, the narrator’s ‘children’: they often submit themselves to the narrator’s authority without reserve. But precisely because of that, readers are deeply at a loss when their trust is betrayed. This underscores a core function of fiction, namely to evoke emotional response in the reader. In this paper, we hypothesize how a reader’s imaginative engagement can be subjected to narrative frustration due to processing or moral complexity. The types of narrative frustration we consider differ in terms of their sources, and their emotional and behavioral impacts on the reader. Here, we break down these frustrations into their component parts, in an effort to better characterize the different classes of frustrations. We propose that frustrations arise from different combinations of local uncertainty, moral clash and global uncertainty. These sources of frustration in turn explain the reader’s emotional response and their consequent reading behavior as they imaginatively engage with fiction.

Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, and (iii) the phenomenon of co-referencing across pictures. We extend Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to spell out a formal Super Pragmatics that applies to linguistic, pictorial and mixed discourses, while respecting the particular ‘genius’ of either medium and computing their distinctive pragmatic interpretations.

This paper examines switch reference (SR) in A'ingae, an understudied isolate language from Amazonian Ecuador. We present a theoretically informed survey of SR, identifying three distinct uses of switch reference: in clause chaining, adverbial clauses, and so-called 'bridging' clause linkage. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of each use in detail, the first such description for A'ingae, showing that the three constructions differ in important ways. While leaving a full syntactic analysis to future work, we argue that these disparate properties preclude a syntactic account that unifies these three constructions to the exclusion of other environments without SR. Conversely, while a full semantic account is also left to future work, we suggest that a unified semantic account in terms of discourse coherence principles appears more promising. In particular, we propose that switch reference in A'ingae occurs in all and only the constructions that are semantically restricted to non-structuring coordinating coherence relations in the sense of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory.

AbstractThis chapter surveys syntactic analyses of extraction from coordinate structures. We begin by outlining some desiderata for a syntactic account, and outline the challenge posed by the poor fit between the Coordinate Structure Constraint and other syntactic constraints on movement enumerated in recent work in the Chomskyan tradition. We distinguish three approaches to this challenge: some analyses (for example, those developed in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar or Combinatory Categorial Grammar) reject central assumptions of Chomskyan locality theory; others (so-called ‘multiplanar’ analyses) derive the Coordinate Structure Constraint within the broad outline of Chomskyan locality theory by proposing a novel syntax of coordination which cannot be reduced to context-free phrase structure; and a final group of analyses (such as that of Munn 1993) reject the CSC as a syntactic constraint. The first two types of analyses are liable to undergenerate because they rule out asymmetric extraction patterns of the sort described in Chapter 3, while the final type of analysis is liable to overgenerate unless supplemented with nonsyntactic constraints of the sort to be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.

AbstractWe propose that discourse relations indirectly condition extraction from coordinate structures, through the intermediary of topicality. We implement this proposal in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT). Key components of the analysis are the SDRT distinction between coordinating and subordinating discourse relations; Txurruka’s claim that English ‘and’ signals a coordinating discourse relation; SDRT’s taxonomy of coordinating discourse relations in terms of their relationship to a discourse topic; von Fintel’s analysis of the relationship between sentence topic and discourse topic; a link between sentence topic and extraction from weak islands; Postal’s claim that adjuncts are weak islands; and Munn’s claim that noninitial conjuncts are adjuncts. These ideas, combined, lead to two main predictions: 1) only topical material may extract from noninitial conjuncts, while there is no such constraint on initial conjuncts; 2) only certain discourse relations allow extraction from noninitial conjuncts, because not every relation permits the required distribution of topical material.

The goal of this book is to explore interactions between syntactic structure and discourse structure, through a case study of patterns of extraction from coordinate structures. This is the most complete account of extraction from coordinate structures to date. This is a consequence of the theoretical breadth of the survey undertaken: extraction from coordinate structures is, at first blush, a syntactic matter, but the survey ranges far beyond syntax, and this breadth raises theoretical and empirical questions across syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse structure. A complete survey of extraction from coordinate structure must pay attention to all of these domains, and their interactions. Instead of aiming to promote a single analysis, this survey motivates reasonable hypotheses which allow one to reason deductively from empirical facts to theoretical conclusions. The theoretical conclusions show that coordinate structures have the potential to discriminate between current syntactic theories, and to inform work on the interfaces between syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse. However, in many cases, the necessary empirical work has not yet been done, and too much of the literature revolves around the same handful of examples, mainly in English. We hope that this book will inspire further work on extraction from coordinate structures, particularly in understudied languages, and provide a guide to how to tease out the theoretical implications of empirical findings.

AbstractThis chapter introduces the Coordinate Structure Constraint, or CSC, Ross’ generalization stating that conjuncts may not be extracted from coordinate structures (the ‘Conjunct Constraint’), and that elements contained within conjuncts may not be extracted from coordinate structures (the ‘Element Constraint’). We demonstrate the applicability of the CSC across several movement types, languages, and conjunctions. However, we also identify several counterexamples to the CSC. The first is the possibility of Across-The-Board extraction, also discovered by Ross. Others include the possibility of extracting whole conjuncts, in violation of the Conjunct Constraint, in languages like Serbo-Croatian, the SLF-construction found in many Germanic languages, and several asymmetric extraction patterns apparently licensed by discourse-semantic ‘scenarios’, which is the focus of Chapters 4-6.

We propose to characterize imaginative resistance as the failure or unwillingness of the reader to take a fictional description of a deviant reality at face value. The goal of the paper is to explore how readers deal with such a breakdown of the default Face Value interpretation strategy. We posit two distinct interpretative ‘coping’ strategies which help the reader engage with the resistance-inducing fiction by attributing the offending content to one of the fictional characters. We present novel empirical evidence that shows that actual readers use these strategies and we flesh out the exact workings of these strategies by integrating them into a general formal semantic framework for interpreting fiction.

Abstract This chapter introduces Kehler’s Humean taxonomy of discourse relations, and explains Kehler’s use of that taxonomy to formalize Lakoff’s generalizations about discourse-semantic ‘scenarios’ which license asymmetric extraction from coordinate structures. This approach to extraction from coordinate structures stands in opposition to the approaches surveyed in Chapter 4, as it relies on discourse semantics rather than syntax. However, Lakoff’s project, properly formalized, is shown to be untenable, because Lakoff’s Type C scenario (involving the discourse relation result) is a special case of the Type A scenario (involving the discourse relation occasion), but the Type C extraction pattern is distinct from the Type A extraction pattern. Moreover, there are regularities among examples of Lakoff’s Type B scenario which do not follow from Kehler’s formalization in terms of the discourse relation violated expectation. Overall, in this chapter we conclude that discourse relations cannot directly account for the asymmetric extraction patterns that Lakoff observed.

This paper examines a particular type of clause linkage (‘bridging’) in A’ingae, an en-dangered isolate spoken in Amazonian Ecuador and Colombia.We propose a formalcharacterization of its meaning (to our knowledge the first formal account for any language)that relies crucially on two SDRT coherence relations: NARRATION and BACKGROUND.We motivate this characterization with textual data and elicited data from context-relativefelicity judgments, and propose to derive it from independently observable facts aboutprosody, coordination, and anaphora in the language

The traditional view is that now is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal now allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat now as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The first mistake concerns the semantic value of now which is not a time, but a state --- the consequent state of a prominent event. The second is that now is a pure indexical after all, insofar as its interpretation is determined without recourse to extra-linguistic supplementation. Specifically, we argue that any occurrence of now selects the consequent state of the most prominent event, where event-prominence is linguistically maintained through prominence-affecting updates contributed by coherence relations. Our analysis accounts straightforwardly for a wide range of discourse initial and discourse bound uses of now while giving it a simple indexical meaning. EARLY ACCESS

The goal of this paper is to explore the consequences of adopting Abusch (2014)’s hypothesis about pictures—that they are stative depictions of the world—for the interpreta-tion of discourses. We focus on the phenomenon of narrative progression and reject Abusch’s proposal that aspectual differences between linguistic and pictorial narrative do not factor in providing a uniform analysis across media. Based on eventive-stative sequences in linguistic narrative, we develop a new answer within Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. We state a single pragmatic algorithm that exploits the aspectual differences between linguistic and pictorial narratives to derive the correct predictions.