Explanation
Coherence is the meaningful connectedness through which utterances or textual parts are understood as components of a whole. It is not simply visible between sentences but arises through linguistic cues, world knowledge, genre expectations, inference, and communicative situation. A text may have few explicit links and remain coherent; conversely, pronouns, connectives, and repetition as cohesive devices do not guarantee intelligible meaning. Coherence can be examined locally between adjacent statements and globally in relation to topic, purpose, or narrative structure. Different readers may construct plausible but non-identical connections without every interpretation becoming equally supported. The movement connects initially separate statements through supplied relations into a path of meaning and returns under contradiction to revise those connections.
Movement of thought
1. Several statements or sign sequences first occur successively without fully specifying their common meaning. 2. Linguistic cues, context, and knowledge activate possible temporal, causal, thematic, or argumentative relations. 3. Readers or listeners select and supply connections that reconcile local transitions with a global orientation. 4. A counter-test seeks contradiction and missing bridges and separates coherence from cohesion, topic repetition, and subjective arbitrariness. 5. The text returns as a meaningful whole but remains revisable when later statements reorganise earlier relations.
Scientific use case
Text linguistics, psycholinguistics, and AI evaluation examine reference, inference, event structure, and global thematic development. Comprehension tests identify which connections are actually constructed and remembered.
Example
“The lights went out. The hall became silent. Someone looked for a torch.” Without an explicit “therefore,” readers construct a plausible event connection.
Counterexample
“Anna opened the window. Therefore seven is a prime number.” The connective supplies cohesion but, without a special context, no intelligible causal coherence.
Distinction
Distinguish it from cohesion, consistency, textuality, text progression, thematic unity, plausibility, and truth; linguistic surface and constructed meaningful connection are not identical.
Effect on thought and perception
Coherence enables orientation, memory, and inference across sentence boundaries; excessive expectation of it may overread coincidence as causation or prematurely smooth contradiction.
Resonance
Separate sentences begin to answer one another; a path forms between them that is nowhere fully written yet carries the whole.
Etymology
Technical core term; individual etymological review pending
Provenance
Unresolved relation network → second core-concept review → Metzler/HWRh cross-check → ATLAS 239
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Coherence“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-CORE-239-029. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-CORE-239-029The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Locke describes connected discourse as more than a series of locally intelligible statements. Thought must proceed in a train and preserve dependencies among thoughts and reasonings; particles indicate connection, restriction, opposition or emphasis between sentences. The passage therefore documents an early English analysis of continuous reasoning and narration, not the whole terminology of modern text linguistics. Explicit links contribute to coherence, while inference and contextual knowledge can also establish connectedness beyond Locke's brief account.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Test how statements belong together through explicit devices, inferential relations and contextual knowledge. Grammatical linkage alone does not guarantee a meaningful whole, and absent connectives do not preclude coherence.
References for the historical section
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (first published with the date 1690), Books III–IV; Gutenberg transcription identified as based on the second edition · III.vii.1–2, connected reasoning or narration and the dependence of thoughts
Selected original-English passages read; not collated against first-edition page images. Modern profile labels are explicitly distinguished from the terminology used by Locke. His account of ideas is a historical philosophical position, not a verified contemporary model of language or cognition.