ABSTRACT
It is a common view that forming inferences is an essential part of linguistic comprehension. Within the context of models for reading (see section 6.2), several psycholinguistic theories of inference have been proposed for text comprehension (e.g., see Flammer, & Kintsch, 1981; Rickheit, & Strohner, 1985; Garnham, 1989; Denhière, & Rossi, 1991; Singer, 1994). In general, these theories belong to the problematic “text linguistics” approach discussed in section 2.4. Recall that this approach is not grounded and relies on the existence of macrostructures. In this section, it is not my intent to revisit this conclusion, but rather to briefly comment on the plethora of models of inference in order to highlight a fundamental controversy still raging in text comprehension: the dichotomy between minimalist and constructionist accounts of inferencing.
