Discourse relations and conjoined VPs: automated sense recognition

Sense classification of discourse relations is a sub-task of shallow discourse parsing. Discourse relations can occur both across sentences (inter-sentential) and within sentences (intra-sentential), and more than one discourse relation can hold between the same units. Using a newly available corpus of discourse-annotated intra-sentential conjoined verb phrases, we demonstrate a sequential classification system for their multi-label sense classification. We assess the importance of each feature used in the classification, the feature scope, and what is lost in moving from gold standard manual parses to the output of an off-the-shelf parser

Implicit reference to citations: a study of astronomy

The research in this paper presents results in the automatic classification of pronouns within articles into those which refer to cited research and those which do not. It also discusses the automatic linking of pronouns which do refer to citations to their corresponding citations. The current study focused on the pronoun they as used in papers in Astronomy journals. The paper describes a classifier trained on maximum entropy principles using features defined by the distance to preceding citations and the category of verbs associated to the pronoun under consideration

Textual Economy through Close Coupling of Syntax and Semantics

We focus on the production of efficient descriptions of objects, actions and events. We define a type of efficiency, textual economy, that exploits the hearer's recognition of inferential links to material elsewhere within a sentence. Textual economy leads to efficient descriptions because the material that supports such inferences has been included to satisfy independent communicative goals, and is therefore overloaded in Pollack's sense. We argue that achieving textual economy imposes strong requirements on the representation and reasoning used in generating sentences. The representation must support the generator's simultaneous consideration of syntax and semantics. Reasoning must enable the generator to assess quickly and reliably at any stage how the hearer will interpret the current sentence, with its (incomplete) syntax and semantics. We show that these representational and reasoning requirements are met in the SPUD system for sentence planning and realization.Comment: 10 pages, uses QobiTree.te

Expectations in Incremental Discourse Processing

The way in which discourse features express connections back to the previous discourse has been described in the literature in terms of adjoining at the right frontier of discourse structure. But this does not allow for discourse features that express expectations about what is to come in the subsequent discourse. After characterizing these expectations and their distribution in text, we show how an approach that makes use of substitution as well as adjoining on a suitably defined right frontier, can be used to both process expectations and constrain discouse processing in general.Comment: 9 pages, uses aclap.sty, psfig.te

Anchoring a Lexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammar for Discourse

We here explore a ``fully'' lexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammar for discourse that takes the basic elements of a (monologic) discourse to be not simply clauses, but larger structures that are anchored on variously realized discourse cues. This link with intra-sentential grammar suggests an account for different patterns of discourse cues, while the different structures and operations suggest three separate sources for elements of discourse meaning: (1) a compositional semantics tied to the basic trees and operations; (2) a presuppositional semantics carried by cue phrases that freely adjoin to trees; and (3) general inference, that draws additional, defeasible conclusions that flesh out what is conveyed compositionally.Comment: 7 pages, uses aclcol.st

Discourse Structures and Language Technologies

Proceedings of the 18th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA 2011. Editors: Bolette Sandford Pedersen, Gunta Nešpore and Inguna Skadiņa. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 11 (2011), 12-16. © 2011 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/16955

Discourse Deixis and Discourse Processing

Computational approaches to discourse understanding have a two-part goal: (1) identifying those aspects of discourse understanding that require process-based accounts, and (2) characterizing the processes and data structures they involve. To date, in the area of reference, process-based accounts have been developed for reference via anaphoric pronouns and via definite descriptors. In this paper, I propose and argue for a process-based account of deictic reference in text. This account adds precision to common notions of discourse entity, discourse segment and focus and to relationships between the three

Deictic Reference and Discourse Structure

Research on the factors and processes involved in pronoun interpretation has to date concentrated on anaphoric pronouns. Results have supported the now widely-held view that discourse understanding involves the creation of a partial, mental model of the situation described through the discourse. Anaphoric pronouns are taken to refer to elements of that model (often called discourse referents or discourse entities), usually ones that have, at the moment of referring, some special focus status. This paper examines deictic pronouns - in particular, ones that refer to the interpretation of one or more clauses. I argue that referents for these pronouns must come from the interpretations of discourse segments on the right frontier of an evolving structure representing the discourse. Under the assumption that reference is always to an individual, this implies that discourse segment interpretations must also be part of the evolving discourse model. I discuss this in the last section of the paper