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Inverse View
It is not the case that Discourse relations are part of linguistic knowledge, not merely reflections of cooperative conversation and maxim following or flouting
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Reasons For
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Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Grice's Cooperative Principle already predicts systematic, predictable inferences without positing them as encoded linguistic knowledge.
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2.
The defeasibility of discourse-relation inferences is better explained by pragmatic cancellability than by a distinct linguistic module.
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3.
If an inference is consistently cancelable without contradiction, this is the hallmark of implicature, not semantic or grammatical encoding.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Cross-linguistic variation in discourse coherence markers suggests discourse relations are culturally negotiated conventions, not universal linguistic structures.
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2.
Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson) derives coherence effects from general cognitive principles of relevance, rendering a specialized linguistic discourse module redundant.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Pronoun resolution in discourse (e.g., interpreting 'him' in ambiguous sentences) depends on which discourse relation connects the sentences
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2.
The search for discourse relations to settle pronominal reference is a systematic linguistic phenomenon
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3.
Defeasibility of the inference (via explicit correction) parallels Gricean cancellation, suggesting a principled linguistic mechanism rather than mere pragmatic inference
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