Framework Of Rhetorical Structure Theory Research Articles

A Pragmatic Analysis of Deliberation in Legal Setting

Deliberation is an increasingly used concept in Argumentation Theory and Linguistic Analysis. But only recently research combined empirical and conceptual tool-boxes from these disciplines for the study of deliberative discourse. The aim of this article is to present a discursive analysis of deliberation as a genre using the relational pragmatic analysis of texts. In particular, we want to see whether different features of deliberation genre map onto relational pragmatic dimension of texts. To do so, authors analyze, in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), the relational discourse structure of legal speeches of argumentative micro-texts written by citizens participating in a series of deliberative mini-publics. Results suggest that genre affects the relational to pragmatic analysis of texts and that we could analyze this effect in RST. Finally, we present, to our knowledge, the first annotated corpus-based genre analysis of the relational pragmatic dimension of argumentative micro texts.

Rhetorical structure analysis of prepared speeches and argumentative essays by Chinese advanced English learners

AbstractThis study focuses on the interrelationship between modes of argumentation and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ rhetorical strategies, by adopting the analytical framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) to produce reliable analyses of rhetorical structures of two most frequently required tasks in the Chinese context. The sample texts consist of 20 prepared speeches and 20 argumentative essays, both written by Chinese advanced EFL learners. The findings reveal that: (1) the essays favor a more direct structure with central units at the beginning while the speeches favor a more indirect structure with central units near the end; (2) Background, Circumstance and Preparation relations appear more frequently at the beginning of the speeches, while the Summary relation appears more frequently at the end of the essays; (3) the two most typical top-level patterns of rhetorical structure in the essays resemble the two patterns in the speeches, but with systematic variation and in reversed orders. The results reflect the active role of rhetorical situation in constructing different modes of argumentation for advanced EFL learners. This study could enrich the scope of the application of RST, and provide pedagogical implications for writing in EFL contexts.

Automatic identification of rhetorical relations among intra-sentence discourse segments in Arabic

Identifying discourse relations, whether implicit or explicit, has seen renewed interest and remains an open challenge. We present the first model that automatically identifies both explicit and implicit rhetorical relations among intra-sentence discourse segments in Arabic text. We build a large discourse annotated corpora following the rhetorical structure theory framework. Our list of rhetorical relations is organised into three level hierarchies of 23 fine-grained relations, grouped into seven classes. To automatically learn these relations, we evaluate and reuse features from literature, and contribute three additional features: accusative of purpose, specific connectives and the number of antonym words. We perform experiments on identifying fine-grained and coarse-grained relations. The results show that compared with all the baselines, our model achieves the best performance in most cases, with an accuracy of 91.05%.

Toward an automatic summarisation of Arabic text depending on rhetorical relations

Rhetorical relations between two text segments are crucial information and have been proven useful for many natural language processing applications. In this paper, we propose a supervised approach for automatic identifying of rhetorical relations in Arabic texts. Our model attempts to identify both implicit and explicit rhetorical relations between elementary discourse units which will be exploited in automatic summarisation of Arabic texts. To carry out this research, we developed a discourse annotated corpus following the rhetorical structure theory framework with high reliability. Relations annotation was done using a set of 23 fine-grained relations enriched with nuclearity annotation. To automatically learn these relations, we reuse some state of the arts features and contribute new lexical and semantics' features. The experimental results on fine-grained and coarse-grained relations show that our model achieved best performance relative to all baselines.

Toward an automatic summarisation of Arabic text depending on rhetorical relations

Rhetorical relations between two text segments are crucial information and have been proven useful for many natural language processing applications. In this paper, we propose a supervised approach for automatic identifying of rhetorical relations in Arabic texts. Our model attempts to identify both implicit and explicit rhetorical relations between elementary discourse units which will be exploited in automatic summarisation of Arabic texts. To carry out this research, we developed a discourse annotated corpus following the rhetorical structure theory framework with high reliability. Relations annotation was done using a set of 23 fine-grained relations enriched with nuclearity annotation. To automatically learn these relations, we reuse some state of the arts features and contribute new lexical and semantics' features. The experimental results on fine-grained and coarse-grained relations show that our model achieved best performance relative to all baselines.

RST-based Discourse Coherence Quality Analysis Model for Students’ English Essays

Against the problems which can’t be solved by the word-level based local coherence analysis model, we propose a new discourse coherence quality analysis model (abbreviated RST-DCQA) by analyzing the full hierarchical discourse structure of English essays. Under the framework of rhetorical structure theory (RST), firstly, we design an RST-style discourse relations parser to capture the deep hierarchical discourse structure of essays; secondly, we transform the discourse relation information into a discourse relation matrix; finally, we design an algorithm to analyze the discourse coherence quality of student’s English essays. The experimental results show that the average error of our model’s score and teacher’s score is only 2.63, and the Pearson correlation coefficient is 0.71. Compared with the other models, our RST-DCQA model has a higher accuracy and better practicality in the field of students’ essays assessment.

Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory

Purpose: The existing body of work regarding discourse coherence in aphasia has provided mixed results, leaving the question of coherence being impaired or intact as a result of brain injury unanswered. In this study, discourse coherence in non-brain-damaged (NBD) speakers and speakers with anomic aphasia was investigated quantitatively and qualitatively.Method: Fifteen native speakers of Cantonese with anomic aphasia and 15 NBD participants produced 60 language samples. Elicitation tasks included story-telling induced by a picture series and a procedural description. The samples were annotated for discourse structure in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) in order to analyse a number of structural parameters. After that 20 naïve listeners rated coherence of each sample.Result: Disordered discourse was rated as significantly less coherent. The NBD group demonstrated a higher production fluency than the participants with aphasia and used a richer set of semantic relations to create discourse, particularly in the description of settings, expression of causality, and extent of elaboration. People with aphasia also tended to omit essential information content.Conclusion: Reduced essential information content, lower degree of elaboration, and a larger amount of structural disruptions may have contributed to the reduced overall discourse coherence in speakers with anomic aphasia.

Discourse structure differences in lay and professional health communication

PurposeIn this paper the authors seek to compare lay (consumer) and professional (physician) discourse structures in answers to diabetes‐related questions in a public consumer health information website.Design/methodology/approachTen consumer and ten physician question threads were aligned. They generated 26 consumer and ten physician answers, constituting a total dataset of 717 discourse units (in sentences or sentence fragments). The authors depart from previous LIS health information behaviour research by utilizing a computational linguistics‐based theoretical framework of rhetorical structure theory, which enables research at the pragmatics level of linguistics in terms of the goals and effects of human communication.FindingsThe authors reveal differences in discourse organization by identifying prevalent rhetorical relations in each type of discourse. Consumer answers included predominately (66 per cent) presentational rhetorical structure relations, those intended to motivate or otherwise help a user do something (e.g. motivation, concession, and enablement). Physician answers included mainly subject matter relations (64 per cent), intended to inform, or simply transfer information to a user (e.g. elaboration, condition, and interpretation).Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest different communicative goals expressed in lay and professional health information sharing. Consumers appear to be more motivating, or activating, and more polite (linguistically) than physicians in how they share information with consumers online in similar topics in diabetes management. The authors consider whether one source of information encourages adherence to healthy behaviour more effectively than another.Originality/valueAnalysing discourse structure – using rhetorical structure theory – is a novel and promising approach in information behaviour research, and one that traverses the lexico‐semantic level of linguistic analysis towards pragmatics of language use.

DiSeg 1.0: The first system for Spanish discourse segmentation

Nowadays discourse parsing is a very prominent research topic. However, there is not a discourse parser for Spanish texts. The first stage in order to develop this tool is discourse segmentation. In this work, we present DiSeg, the first discourse segmenter for Spanish, which uses the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory and is based on lexical and syntactic rules. We describe the system and we evaluate its performance against a gold standard corpus, divided in a medical and a terminological subcorpus. We obtain promising results, which means that discourse segmentation is possible using shallow parsing.

Relações retóricas e funções textual-discursivas na articulação de orações no português brasileiro em uso

In this paper I discuss the rhetorical relations established in two contexts of occurrence of adverbial clauses and appositive relative clauses, as follows: the clauses may be realized either in their canonical form or apart from the main clause, as independent clauses, which I have been calling “floating structures”. My object of investigation isthe equivalence among (a) certain textual-discourse functions performed by such structures, such as “evaluation”, “restatement”, “focus”, among others ? all pertaining to clause combining at a micro level of text organization; (b) the rhetorical relations considered at a macro level of discourse organization; and (c) the syntactic functions performed by those structures. Basically, this study is carried out within de framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory, according to its development by functionalist researchers from the West coast of North America.Key words: rhetorical relations, textual-discourse functions, clause combining, syntactic functions, functionalism.

Relações retóricas e funções textual-discursivas na articulação de orações no português brasileiro em uso

In this paper I discuss the rhetorical relations established in two contexts of occurrence of adverbial clauses and appositive relative clauses, as follows: the clauses may be realized either in their canonical form or apart from the main clause, as independent clauses, which I have been calling “floating structures”. My object of investigation is the equivalence among (a) certain textual-discourse functions performed by such structures, such as “evaluation”, “restatement”, “focus”, among others ─ all pertaining to clause combining at a micro level of text organization; (b) the rhetorical relations considered at a macro level of discourse organization; and (c) the syntactic functions performed by those structures. Basically, this study is carried out within de framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory, according to its development by functionalist researchers from the West coast of North America. Key words: rhetorical relations, textual-discourse functions, clause combining, syntactic functions, functionalism.

Representation of Argumentation in Text with Rhetorical Structure Theory

Various argumentation analysis tools permit the analyst to represent functional components of an argument (e.g., data, claim, warrant, backing), how arguments are composed of subarguments and defenses against potential counterarguments, and argumentation schemes. In order to facilitate a study of argument presentation in a biomedical corpus, we have developed a hybrid scheme that enables an analyst to encode argumentation analysis within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), which can be used to represent the discourse structure of a text. This paper describes the hybrid representation scheme and illustrates its use for investigation of contexts that license omission of elements of an argument. The analyses given in the paper involve reconstruction of enthymemes. Defeasible argumentation schemes serve as a constraint on reconstruction. In addition, the examples illustrate several other types of contextual constraints on reconstruction of enthymemes.

Applications of Rhetorical Structure Theory

Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is a theory of text organization that has led to areas of application beyond discourse analysis and text generation, its original goals. In this article, we review the most important applications in several areas: discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. We also provide a list of resources useful for work within the RST framework. The present article is a complement to our review of the theoretical aspects of the theory (Taboada and Mann, 2006).

Simple Signals for Complex Rhetorics: On Rhetorical Analysis with Rich-Feature Support Vector Models

Most text displays an internal coherence structure, which can be analyzed as a tree structure of relations that hold between short segments of text. We present a machinelearning governed approach to such an analysis in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. Our rhetorical analyzer observes a variety of textual properties, such as cue phrases, part-of-speech information, rhetorical context and lexical chaining. A two-stage parsing algorithm uses local and global optimization to find an analysis. Decisions during parsing are driven by an ensemble of support vector classifiers. This training method allows for a non-linear separation of samples with many relevant features. We define a chain of annotation tools that profits from a new underspecified representation of rhetorical structure. Classifiers are trained on a newly introduced German language corpus, as well as on a large English one. We present evaluation data for the recognition of rhetorical relations.

Identifying Congruent Pragmatic Relations in Procedural Texts

In this paper, we present a methodology for the contrastive analysis of comparable corpora of instructional texts in different languages. The methodology is insensitive to the fact that the texts under comparison differ widely in their semantic content, and it can be reliably applied by multiple analysts. We show the results of an empirical study of cross-linguistic variation between Portuguese, French, and English instructions which follows this methodology. Using consumer instructions for ordinary household products in the three languages, we examine expressions of the two semantic relations, generation and enablement (cf. Goldman, 1970), and their available surface syntactic expressions. We examine the role of discourse perspective, as realised by rhetorical relations such as those employed within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), in further narrowing down the range of choices. We demonstrate that the three languages of study tolerate different levels of ambiguity, and prefer different forms of disambiguation and pragmatic signalling, attesting to the value of empirical methods for contrastive discourse study. The analysis was conducted with the aim of informing all levels of decision, from meaning to surface syntax, in the automatic generation of sets of instructional texts in those languages.