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...

The observation that discourse is more than a mere sequence of utterances or sentences amounts to a truism. But what follows from this? In what way does the ”value added” arise when segments of discourse are juxtaposed how does hierarchical structure originate from a linearized discourse? While many discourse phenomena apply to dialogue and monologue alike, this tutorial will center its attenti...

Keywords: language interpretationlanguage generationdiscourse segmentationdiscourse relations Contents list: Theories of discourse structure; Interpretation of discourse; Generation of discourse; Empirical approaches to discourse Discourse Processing concerns the computational processes underlying the interpretation and production of text encompassing more than one sentence, i.e., discourse. Di...

formulaic sequence (fs) is a general term often used to refer to various types of recurrent clusters. one particular type of fss common in different registers is lexical bundles (lbs). this study investigated whether lbs are stored and processed as a whole in the mind of language users and whether their functional discourse type has any effect on their processing. to serve these objectives, thr...

Organism and environment are in a state of constant interaction, and discourse is viewed as one form of manifestation of this interaction. Through the study of discourse insights can be gained into those components that bring about mental events. Verbal structure, communication of beliefs and action/interaction are highly interactive dimensions of discourse. Taking this perspective as a framewo...

Abstract Two self-paced reading time experiments investigated the application of the semantic theories of Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp 1981; see also, Heim 1982) and Modal Subordination (Roberts 1987, 1989) as the basis for a model of discourse processing. The results of Experiment 1 support the empirical contrast as described by Roberts (1987, 1989), that is, that intersentential anap...

In this paper we describe a reversible framework for discourse processing, a framework in which contextual constraints can be speci ed independently of the processing algorithm. We take as a starting point Scha and Polanyi's discourse grammar ([Scha/Polanyi 1988]) which is in essence a uni cation based grammar extended with arbitrary relations. Although such a framework can be shown to have man...

In order to take steps towards establishing a methodology for evaluating Natural Language systems, we conducted a case study. We attempt to evaluate two different approaches to anaphoric processing in discourse by comparing the accuracy and coverage of two published algorithms for finding the co-specifiers of pronouns in naturally occurring texts and dialogues. We present the quantitative resul...

The goal of the work reported here is to provide a system for handling spoken dialogues which can be easily ported to new languages and new application areas. This work is being carried within the Dumas project, which aims to explore a number of approaches to this task. The particular approach described here involves involes constructing fairly traditional ‘logical forms’ on the basis of struct...

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. INTRODUCTION The flow of inference be...