Hierarchy of salience and discourse analysis and production

Abstract

The hierarchy of salience of the items of the knowledge assumed by the speaker to be shared by him and by the hearer constitutes one aspect of a dynamic account of discourse (Sect. 1). It is claimed that a representation of this hierarchy is a good support for discourse analysis (reference assignement, Sect. 2) and for discourse production (pronominalization, definite description, Sect. 3).