Continuity and discontinuity (maintaining or shifting deictic centres across segments) are important aspects of discourse relations. Yet they have been attributed to these relations in very different ways. This calls for an analysis of individual instances of discourse relations with respect to their continuity dimensions. To this end, we operationalise Givón’s (1993) continuity dimensions (time, space, reference, action, perspective, modality, and speech act), decomposing them into distinctive features that allow a consistent and accurate classification of the continuity dimensions in discourse relation tokens. This inventory was applied to five representative relation types (causal, contrastive, conditional, elaboration, and temporal) from the RST Discourse Treebank (Carlson & Marcu 2001). We found that relations can simultaneously be more continuous for some dimensions but more discontinuous for others. What is more, discourse relations typically vary widely in different continuity dimensions and thus cannot be described as fully continuous or discontinuous, neither on the level of the entire relation type nor for one of its particular dimensions. Using examples of causal, conditional, and contrastive relations, we also illustrate how the results of our analysis can be used to verify hypotheses about correlations between continuity and discourse relations.

中文翻译：

---

话语关系的连续性

连续性和不连续性（跨段保持或转移指示中心）是话语关系的重要方面。然而，它们以非常不同的方式归因于这些关系。这就要求对话语关系的个别实例的连续性维度进行分析。为此，我们将 Givón (1993) 的连续性维度（时间、空间、参考、动作、视角、情态和言语行为）付诸实施，将它们分解为独特的特征，以便对话语关系标记中的连续性维度进行一致和准确的分类. 该清单应用于 RST 话语树库 (Carlson & Marcu 2001) 中的五种代表性关系类型（因果关系、对比关系、条件关系、详细说明关系和时间关系）。我们发现关系可以同时在某些维度上更连续，但对其他维度来说更不连续。更重要的是，话语关系通常在不同的连续性维度上变化很大，因此不能被描述为完全连续或不连续，无论是在整个关系类型的水平上还是在其特定维度之一上。使用因果关系、条件关系和对比关系的示例，我们还说明了我们的分析结果如何用于验证关于连续性和话语关系之间相关性的假设。既不在整个关系类型的级别上，也不在其特定维度之一上。使用因果关系、条件关系和对比关系的示例，我们还说明了我们的分析结果如何用于验证关于连续性和话语关系之间相关性的假设。既不在整个关系类型的级别上，也不在其特定维度之一上。使用因果关系、条件关系和对比关系的示例，我们还说明了我们的分析结果如何用于验证关于连续性和话语关系之间相关性的假设。