In this paper global patterns of thematic text organization me considered within the framework of a distributed model of text understmlding, ttased on file parsing resuhs of prior lext cohesioll analysis, specialized text grammar modules deternfine whether SOllle well-defined text lllltCroorganization palteln is cOlll])ulabte flOlll the available text representatiolt SIrUCttlreS. The model underlying text coherence parsing formalizes hither to entirely intuitive textlinguistic notions whose origin can be traced back to Danes's work on thematic progression patleHlS.