Some Observations on the Role of Knowledge in Discourse Processing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35588/ayr.v1i1.3632Keywords:
discourse processing, knowledge and discourse, types of knowledge, mental modelsAbstract
In this paper, I discuss some aspects of one of the thorniest problems of the theory of discourse processing: The role of knowledge in the production and understanding of discourse. Although there are a large number of articles and books on this topic, some very fundamental questions have as yet hardly been asked. Firstly, I review the scant references to the role of knowledge in discourse processing and then I outline a tentative typology around four groups of knowledge. I then address the key question of how these different types of knowledge play a role in discourse processing, focusing on some hypothetical processes involved in the production of discourse. I finish with a call for an explicit theory of text processing that integrates context models.
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