Understanding a discourse means constructing a coherent representation of that discourse Inferring coherence relations, such as cause‐consequence and claim‐argument, is a necessary condition for a discourse representation to be coherent Despite some descriptively fairly adequate proposals in the literature, there is still no theoretically satisfying account of the links that make a discourse coherent An adequate account of the relations establishing coherence has to be psychologically plausible, because coherence relations are ultimately cognitive relations We are proposing a taxonomy that classifies coherence relations in terms of four cognitively salient primitives, such as the polarity of the relation and the pragmatic or semantic character of the link between the units A classification experiment using fragments of written discourse showed that the 12 classes of coherence relations distinguished in the taxonomy appear to be intuitively plausible and applicable A second experiment investigating t

/pdf/toward-a-taxonomy-of-coherence-relations-3wc2u12d3v.pdf

Toward a taxonomy of coherence relations

To evaluate the extent to which infants and mothers are able to coordinate their behavior, the interactions of 54 mother-infant pairs--18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age--were videotaped. Coordination was evaluated with 2 measures: (1) matching--the extent to which mother and infant engage in the same behavior at the same time; and (2) synchrony--the extent to which mother and infant change their behavior with respect to one another. Mother-infant pairs increase their degree of coordination with infant age, but the proportion of time they are coordinated is small. Mother-son pairs spend more time in coordinated states than mother-daughter pairs. The results suggest that interactions be characterized in terms of their movement from coordinated to miscoordinated states rather than only in terms of their degree of coordination. The gender differences are discussed in terms of their importance for the developmental differences in females and males.

Infant-mother face-to-face interaction: age and gender differences in coordination and the occurrence of miscoordination

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse...

/pdf/rhetorical-structure-theory-looking-back-and-moving-ahead-4ahloieho0.pdf

Rhetorical Structure Theory: looking back and moving ahead

Language acquisition research in autism has traditionally focused on high-level pragmatic deficits. Few studies have examined grammatical abilities in autism, with mixed findings. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by providing a detailed investigation of syntactic and higher-level discourse abilities in verbal children with autism, age 5 years. Findings indicate clear language difficulties that go beyond what would be expected based on developmental level; specifically, syntactic delays, impairments in discourse management and increased production of non-meaningful words (jargon). The present study indicates a highly specific pattern of language impairments, and importantly, syntactic delays, in a group of children with autism carefully matched on lexical level and non-verbal mental age with children with developmental delays and typical development.

Beyond pragmatics: morphosyntactic development in autism.

The theory has 3 parts: (a) A lexical entry defines the information about if in semantic memory; its core comprises 2 inferences schemas, Modus Ponens and a schema for Conditional Proof; the latter operates under a constraint that explains differences between if and the material conditional of standard logic. (b) A propositional-logic reasoning program specifies a routine for reasoning from information as interpreted to a conclusion. (c) A set of pragmatic principles governs how an if sentence is likely to be interpreted in context

A Theory of If: A Lexical Entry, Reasoning Program, and Pragmatic Principles

The acquisition of connective forms and the meaning relations between connected clauses in the development of complex sentences is described for four children from two to three years of age. The major results of the study include the developmental interactions between syntactic connectives and meaning relations, and between these interactions and the discourse environments in which they occurred. The first syntactic connective the children learned, and, was the most general: semantically, and was used to encode conjunction with all of the different conjunction meaning relations in the order Additive < Temporal < Causal < Adversative. Other connectives were semantically more specific, and were learned subsequently with different syntactic structures in the order Conjunction < Complementation < Relativization. These results are discussed in terms of FORM, relative linguistic complexity; CONTENT, the intersection of form with conceptual and semantic factors affecting acquisition; and USE, discourse cohesion.

/pdf/complex-sentences-acquisition-of-syntactic-connectives-and-53dv80h3lm.pdf

Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode

Social interchange in infancy: Affect, cognition and communication

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Karin Lifter

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode

Social interchange in infancy: Affect, cognition and communication