2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/151308Based on empirical evidence from a free word order language (German) we propose a fundamental revision of the principles guiding the ordering of discourse entities in the forward-looking centers within the centering model. We claim that grammatical role criteria should be replaced by indicators of the functional information structure of the utterances, i.e., the distinction between context-bound and unbound discourse elements. This claim is backed up by an empirical evaluation of functional centering.8 pages, uuencoded compressed PS file (see also Technical Report at: http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/public/papers/acl96.ps.gz)Computation and Languagetext