Motivations And Implications Of Veins Theory

The paper deals with the cohesion part of a model of global discourse interpretation, usually known as Veins Theory (VT). By taking from the Rhetorical Structure Theory the notions of nuclearity and relations, but ignoring the relations’ names, VT computes from rhetorical structures strings of discourse units, called veins, from which domains of accessibility can be determined for each discourse unit. VT’s constructs best fit with an incremental view on discourse processing. Linguistics and cognitive observations that lead to the elaboration of the theory are presented. Cognitive aspects like short-term memory and on-line summarization are explained in terms of VT’s constructs. Complementary remarks are made over anaphora and its resolution in relation with the interpretation of discourse.