But I am still confused by the exact definition of coherence in the case of overlapping. Does the standard coherence theorem apply? If yes, how? If no, is there a theorem?
Yes, the is, by Martin Sulzmann et al, the Theory of overloading (the journal version) http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~sulzmann/ms_bib.html#overloading-journal A simple intuition is this: instance selection may produce more than one candidate instance. Having inferred a polymorphic type with constraints, the compiler checks to see of some of the constraints can be reduced. If an instance selection produces no candidate instances, the typechecking failure is reported. If there is exactly one candidate instance, it is selected and the constraint is removed because it is resolved. An instance selection may produce more then one candidate instance. Those candidate instances may be incomparable: for example, given the constraint "C a" and instances "C Int" and "C Bool", both instances are candidates. If such is the case, the resolution of that constraint is deferred and it `floats out', to be incorporated into the type of the parent expression, etc. In the presence of overlapping instances, the multiple candidate instances may be comparable, e.g. "C a" and "C Int". The compiler then checks to see if the target type is at least as specific as the most specific of those candidate instances. If so, the constraint is reduced; otherwise, it is deferred. Eventually enough type information is available to reduce all constraints (or else it is a type error).