From theories on styles to their transfer in text: Bridging the gap with a hierarchical survey

Humans are naturally endowed with the ability to write in a particular style. They can, for instance, re-phrase formal letter an informal way, convey literal message use of figures speech or edit novel by mimicking style some well-known authors. Automating this form creativity constitutes goal transfer. As natural language generation task, transfer aims at rewriting existing texts, and specifically, it creates paraphrases that exhibit desired stylistic attributes. From practical perspective, envisions beneficial applications, like chatbots modulate their communicative appear empathetic, systems automatically simplify technical articles non-expert audience. Several style-aware paraphrasing methods have attempted tackle A handful surveys give methodological overview field, but they do not support researchers focus on specific styles. With paper, we aim providing comprehensive discussion styles received attention task. We organize them hierarchy, highlighting challenges definition each them, pointing out gaps current research landscape. The hierarchy comprises two main groups. One encompasses people arbitrarily, along lines registers genres. other group corresponds unintentionally expressed styles, due author's personal characteristics. Hence, our review shows how these groups relate one another, where including yet been explored, belong hierarchy. Moreover, summarize employed different families, hinting towards those would be most fitting future research.