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In Grosz and Sidner 1986 we proposed a theory of discourse structure comprising three components: a linguistic structure, an intentional structure, and an attentional state. These three constituents of discourse structure deal with different aspects of the utterances in a discourse. Utterancesthe actual saying or writing of particular sequences of phrases and clausesare the linguistic structure's basic elements. Intentions and the relations of domination and satisfaction precedence provide the basic elements of the intentional structure. Attentional state contains information about the objects, properties, relations, and discourse intentions that are most salient at any given point. It is an abstraction of the focus of attention of the discourse participants; it serves to summarize information from previous utterances crucial for processing subsequent ones, thus obviating the need for keeping a complete history of the discourse. In …