Semantics and pragmatics relationship

According to many current theories of coherence relations, a distinction can be drawn between relations that hold between the content of the text spans they link (which can be termed semantic relations), and those that hold between the utterances of the text spans themselves or the beliefs which underlie them (which can be termed pragmatic). However, this distinction is not always clearcut. One useful recent proposal by Sweetser effectively results in dividing the class of pragmatic relations in two, distinguishing between epistemic relations (which hold between the beliefs which underlie a speaker's utterances) and speech-act relations (which hold between the utterances themselves). In this paper I begin by reviewing the advantages and shortcomings of both these approaches. I then propose an alternative, intention-based definition of pragmatic relations, which I argue retains the advantages of both approaches while avoiding at least some of their shortcomings. 1 Introduction This pa...