A Mark Up Language For Tagging Discourse And Annotating Documents In Context Sensitive Interpretation Environments

A mark up language for tagging discourse, and for converting discourse sequences into a written format, according to highly context sensitive procedures, will be illustrated as well as a system for document annotation. The context in which a given communicative intercourse has taken place needs to be made available to ensure consistent interpretation of both single sequences of discourse and global concepts that are carried along during the dialogue or conversation. Full vis~ility of different communicative intentions that reflect the evolution of conversations in time and space, as well as access to various modes of communicative actions and changing conditions of interpretation, is relevant and necessary, especially in contexts where interaction is based upon asynchronous communication. Interpretation ~hif~s, that each sequence of a dialogue is likely to undergo, may create distortions in the interpretation of the overall intercourse and communicative action leading to the creation of the final document. Some contextual concretions, which may be based upon false assumptions, are particularly powerful Persistent interpretative links may be evoked and activated at any time, even if unintentionally. Special attention needs to be paid to ensure that undesirable links are not established and unintentional contextual concretions are not added. Use of a consistently applied, commonly shared conceptual tool for assit~ning contextsensitive interpretative values to each sequence of discourse holds great promise for avoidance of this problem Appropriately packaged documents and parts of documents could carry along their own originating context of discourse in the form of attached information. Accurate illustrations using a fidly functional set of tools I have developed are provided here to show how fi~zziness and misinterpretation (caused by an absence of consistent interpretative clues about originating contextual conditions for discourse and conversations) may be significantly reduced or even eliminated.