Analysis of the factors that make a text coherent or non-coherent suggests that total coherence requires cohesion not only on the textual surface but on the semantic level as well. Syntactic evidence of non-coherence includes lack of formal agreement blocking a potential cross-reference, anaphoric and cataphoric references that do not follow their own rules, breaches of collocational restrictions, discrepancies of polysemy or homonymy, discrepancy between referential and metalinguistic meanings, shifts in genericity, violation of normal patterns of placement of old or new information interpreted as a shift of referent, and an unmotivated shift in style. Pragmatic indications of non-coherence include a shift of referent, appearing as a time shift, and explicit or implicit contradiction. Iconic homomorphism results in pseudo-coherence. In semantic terms, a text is coherent if its sentences conform to the picture of a single possible world in the experience or imagination of the receiver, and if this pragmatic unity is signalled on the textual surface adequately for the receiver to grasp the connections. Simple mechanical linking of neighboring sentences must be supported by pragmatic coherence to result in full coherence; otherwise, the text is pseudo-coherent. (MSE)