The processing of underspecified coherence relations

Abstract

One reason discourse coheres is because coherence relations such as Cause‐Consequence can be inferred between the sentences that function as the building blocks of the discourse. This article discusses cases in which the coherence relation remains underspecified: A connective is used that does not “literally” express the intended coherence relation. Underspecification has been dealt with in pragmatics and psycho‐linguistics. The purpose of this artice is to give an analysis of the phenomenon in pragmatic terms, as well as different strategies of how language users deal with these issues, phrased in terms of Horn's (1984) Q‐ and R‐principle. Apart from that, data from the psycholinguistic literature on the interpretation of underspecified relations and data from language acquisition research are presented that suggest that both speakers and hearers tend to be cooperative in using underspecified relations.