In a series of seminal papers, Jerry Hobbs HOBBS, J. (1985). On the Coherence and Structure of Discourse. Technical Report, 37.Hobbs, J. R. (1979). Coherence and coreference. Cognitive science, 3(1), 67-90. investigated the interplay of discourse relations and coherence since the late 1970s. His work has been the basis for most subsequent theories and annotation frameworks of discourse relations.
