---
title: "Coherence and Interpretation in English Texts"
authors:
  - "Jerry R. Hobbs"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/21"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/0021.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1977
pages: "110-115"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Coherence and Interpretation in English Texts

Jerry R. Hobbs

*Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 110-115.

## Abstract

A theory and system are described for the semantic analysis of complex, coherent English texts. The principal question addressed in this paper is how the meanings of the smaller elements of language compose into the meanings of larger stretches of text. Within sentence boundaries, this is achieved by an operation, called predicate interpretation, which provides a mechanism for general words, especially those having a spatial flavor, to acquire specific interpretations in context. Beyond sentence boundaries it is achieved by an operation which matches successive sentences against a small number of common patterns and builds up a tree-like structure representing the text's patterns of coherence.