Underspecification-based algorithms for processing partially disambiguated discourse structure must cope with extremely high numbers of readings. Based on previous work on dominance graphs and weighted tree grammars, we provide the first possibility for computing an underspecified discourse description and a best discourse representation efficiently enough to process even the longest discourses...

Models of discourse and narration elaborated within the classical compositional framework have been characterized as bottom-up models, according to which discourse analysis proceeds incrementally, from phrase and sentence local meaning to discourse global meaning. In this paper we will argue against these models. Assuming as a case study the issue of discourse coherence, we suggest that the ass...

This paper presents a brief description of Explanation-Based Learning (EBL), and argues that it is an approach to machine learning with signi cant potential for use in discourse processing. More speci cally, EBL can be used by systems that model discourse generation as goaldriven behavior, and that model discourse interpretation as recognizing the speaker's discourse goals. As evidence, we desc...

This paper is about the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing. We augment a theory of discourse interpretation with a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them, in order to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure.

The discourse of 91 children who had sustained severe (n = 68) or mild (n = 23) closed head injury (CHI) was examined at least three years postinjury. The groups' retellings of a narrative story were analyzed according to two domains, information and language. In comparison to the mild CHI group, the severe group produced stories characterized by reduced content and information, impaired organi...

Motivated by the recent effort on scenario-based context question answering (QA), this paper investigates the role of discourse processing and its implication on query expansion for a sequence of questions. Our view is that a question sequence is not random, but rather follows a coherent manner to serve some information goals. Therefore, this sequence of questions can be considered as a mini di...

To communicate efficiently, speakers typically link their utterances to the discourse environment and adapt their utterances to the listener's discourse representation. Information structure describes how linguistic information is packaged within a discourse to optimize information transfer. The present study investigates the nature and time course of context integration (i.e., aboutness topic ...

The study presents an overview of discursive complexology, integral paradigm linguistics, cognitive studies and computer linguistics aimed at defining discourse complexity. article comprises three main parts, which successively outline views on the category linguistic complexity, history complexology modern methods text complexity assessment. Distinguishing concepts we recognize absolute nature...

Identifying Component Discourse Processes Reading—from works to multiple texts (pp. 147-159). Reading is a complex task and it is accomplished by several interactive levels of skills, starting from phonological, lexical and syntactic analyses and extending to propositionalization (Perfetti & Britt, 1995) and intra-sentence integration/discourse-levels (Mason & Just 2004), which involve cognitiv...

Discourse connectives play an important role in making a text coherent and helping humans to infer relations between spans of text. Using the Penn Discourse Treebank, we investigate what information relevant to inferring discourse relations is conveyed by discourse connectives, and whether the specificity of discourse relations reflects general cognitive biases for establishing coherence. We al...