The correlational structure of judgments of grammatical coreference is examined using factor analysis and the results are used to identify the dimensions of grammatical variation in competent speakers of English. The dimensions that are discovered do not correspond to those typically discussed in generative linguistics but they can be explained very naturally by a model in which coreference is achieved through a process in which linguistic expressions are mapped onto a model of discourse.

Causality plays an important role in giving discourse its characteristic coherence. This paper examines how causality implicit in an utterance helps to organize dynamically constructed mental models of discourse. Experiments are reported suggesting that the linguistic form of utterances contributes significant semantic information about causality to a discourse representation. This view is contrasted with competing claims in the literature that causality only emerges from social psychological inferences or optional inferences on background knowledge.