Discourse Understanding
• Structure of coherent discourse: Sentences are joined by
coherence relations
• Examples of coherence relations between S1 and S2:
– Enable or cause:  S1 brings about a change of state that
causes or enables S2
ϊ “I went outside. I drove to school.”
– Explanation: the reverse of enablement, S2 causes or
enables S1 and is an explanation for S1
ϊ “I was late for school. I overslept.”
– Exemplification: S2 is an example of the general principle
in S1
ϊ “This algorithm reverses a list. The input [A,B,C] is mapped to
[C,B,A].”
– Etc.