The point of this example is that the temporal sequencing which is be assumed is one of the opening of the door preceding the handing over of the key. The question then is why (24) is not enriched to he opened the door after she handed him the key in accordance with our much used door-opening script. (I don's want to imply that this is completely impossible but it is a very much less accessible interpretation, to put it mildly.) It begins to look as if there are two different ways by which we reach temporal sequencing assumptions: (1) via mental scripts, (2) via order of presentation of information. The two frequently work in tandem and make the same temporal ordering prediction, as in (23a). Order of presentation apparently holds sway in (24) and there is no sense of tension since scenarios in which a person opens a door in order to hand something to another person are not particularly unusual, although less accessible perhaps than the key-opening-the-door routine, all other things being equal, which they are not in this case. A serious conflict between these two routes accounts for the weirdness of the well-known examples in (25a) and (25b):
These sorts of examples motivated Grice's original manner maxim enjoining orderliness and Harnish's mirroring' maxims (Harnish, 1976). However, as H. Clark (cited by Gazdar, 1979: 44/ first noted, sequencing maxims simply make the wrong predictions about examples such as (26a) and (26b), where the temporal and consequence relations can go either way; these differ from examples (26c) and (26d) for which the 'backwards' relations are not possible: