Control of inference: role of some aspects of discourse structure-centering

Abstract

The purpose of this communication is to examine one particular aspect of discourse structure, namely, a discourse construct called center of a sentence (utterance) in discourse and its relation to the larger issue of control of inference. We have described very briefly the notion of center(s) of a sentence in discourse and discussed how the centering phenomenon might be incorporated in a formal model of inference and its relation to the intrinsic complexity of certain inferences.