Discourse relation

A discourse relation (also coherence relation or rhetorical relation) is a description of how two segments of <a href="/facts/Discourse/6qITpvKg">discourse</a> are <a href="/facts/Logic/8JnpJLtt">logically</a> and/or structurally connected to one another.
A widely upheld position is that in <a href="/facts/Coherence_(linguistics)/UC2e3L6u">coherent discourse</a>, every individual utterance is connected by a discourse relation with a context element, e.g., another segment that corresponds to one or more utterances. An alternative view is that discourse relations correspond to the sense (semantic meaning or pragmatic function) of discourse connectives (discourse markers, discourse cues, e.g., conjunctions, certain adverbs), so that every discourse connective elicits at least one discourse relation. Both views converge to some extent in that the same underlying inventory of discourse relations is assumed.
There is no general agreement on the exact inventory of discourse relations, but current inventories are specific to theories or frameworks. With ISO/TS 24617-5 (Semantic annotation framework; Part 5: Discourse structure, SemAF-DS), a standard has been proposed, but it is not widely used in existing annotations or by tools. Yet another proposal to derive at a generalized discourse relation inventory is the cognitive approach to coherence relations (CCR), which reduces discourse relations to a combination of five parameters.
In addition to a discourse relation inventory, some (but not all) theories postulate structural constraints on discourse relations, and if <a href="/facts/Paratactic/MDBHpsGl">paratactic</a> (coordinate) or <a href="/facts/Hypotactic/yMjQA9SB">hypotactic</a> (subordinate) relations are distinguished that hold across two or more text spans, coherence in discourse can be modelled as a tree (as in RST, see below) or over a tree (as in SDRT, see below).

Discourse relation open-in-new

Discourse relation