On Text Coherence via Frame-Based Presuppositions

Abstract

The article is an attempt to shed light on one of the most interesting issues on the crossroads of psycholinguistics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics – framebased semantics and frame-based presuppositions as text coherence means. The findings of the article allow of the following statement: the text is implicitly bound via complex mental structures – frames – by virtue of their hierarchic, presuppositional structure. The appearance of a frame in the context implicitly introduces pieces of information – presuppositions – from its information slots. The presuppositions structured in the slots of the frame create predictable associations of words and word-combinations on the surface structure of the text, thus securing its coherence.