Automatic Text Summarization Based on the Global Document Annotation

The GDA (Glol)al Do(:ument Annotation) t)roject t)roposes a tag set which allows machines to automatically infer the underlying semantic/pragmatic structure of documents. Its objectives are to promote development and spread of N L P / A I at)plications to render GDA-tagged do(:uments versatile and intelligent (:ontents, wld(:h shouhl motiwtte W W W (World Wide Web) users to tag their doemnents a~s l)art of content authoring. This 1)aper discusses automatic text sunnnariz~tion based on GDA. Its mifin features are a domain/style-fi'ee algorithm and personalization on SUlmnarization whi(:h reflects readers' interests and preferences. In order to calculate the iml)ort~m(:e score of a text element, the algorithm uses st)re;uting aetiwttion on an intradoeulnent network whi(:h conm'.(:ts text elements via thematic, rhetorical, and corefere.ntial re.lations. The i)roi)osed method is flexible enough to dynami(:ally gen(,rate sl lnll l laries of wLrious sizes, i Slllll111ary t)rowse.r SUl)porting I)ersonalization is reported ~m well. 1, I n t r o d u c t i o n The W W W hiLs opened up all era in which an unrestricted nunfl)er of people i)ut)lish their messages (dectronically through their online do(:mnents. However, it is still very hard to automatically process (:ontents of those documents. The reasons include the following: 1. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tags mainly specify the physical layout of documents. They address very fe.w (:on~,ent-related annotations. 2. Hypertext links cannot very nmch 11(;11) readers recognize the content of a document. 3. The W W W authors tend to 1)e less earefifl about wording and readability than in traditional t)rintcd media. Currently there is no systematic means for quality control in the WWW. Although HTML is a fle.xible tool that allows you to freely write and read messages on the WWW, it is neither very c(mvenient to readers nor suital)h: for automatic 1)roeessing of contents. We have been deveh)t)ing an integrated platfornl for (loeunmnt authoring, t)ul)lishing. &lid; reltse by combining natural language and W W W teehnoh)gies. As the first ste l) of our project, we ([efined a new tag set and developed tools for editing tagged texts and browsing these texts. The browser has the functionality of summarization an(l (:ont(ult-base(l retrieval of tagged docmnents. This l)aper focuse.s on summarization t)ased on this system. The main features of our summarization method are a dmnain/styh.~-free algorithm and l)ersonalization to reflect readers" interests and preferen(:es. This method mtturally outperfornm the tr~tditional summarization methods, which just pick out senten(:(,.s highly scored on the basis of superii(:iM clues such as word count, and so on. 2 G l o b a l D o c u m e n t A n n o t a t i o n GDA (Global Do(:mne.nt Almotation) is a challenging t)rojeet to Inake W W W texts nl&(:hineundel'standabh~ on the basis of a new tag set. and to develo l) Col~tent-t)ased presentation, retrieval, question-answering, summarization, and translation systems with mu(:h higher quality thorn before. GDA thus t)roposes an integrated global platform for ele(:tronic conl;ent authoring, presentation, and reuse. The GDA tag se.t is based on XML (Extensibh; Markup Language), and designed ~us (:Oml)atible as possible with HTML, TEl. EAGLES, and so forth. An example of a GDA-tagged sentence is as follows: t ime flies like an arrow . means sentential unit. . . . . alld lllealt 11o1111.