THE SCOPE OF DISCOURSE CONNECTIVES - IMPLICATIONS FOR DISCOURSE ORGANIZATION

The main aim of this paper is to discuss the claim that discourse conn ectives are best treated as indicators of coherence relations between hierarchically organized discourse units. It will be argued that coher ence relations cannot be seen as cognitively real entities. Furthermor e, there is no evidence for hierarchical organization in discourse. Th e intuitions underlying the notion of hierarchical discourse structure are instead explained in terms of consequences of processing a text i n the search for optimal relevance. This account draws attention to a hitherto not widely discussed set of data.