Analyzing the Explanation Structure of Procedural Texts: Dealing with Advice and Warnings

We present the explanation structure of procedural texts, focusing on the analysis of argumentation, in particular advice and warnings. Their role is to support and motivate the goal-instruction structure, which is the skeleton of procedural texts. Procedural texts consist of a sequence of instructions, designed with some accuracy in order to reach a goal (e.g. assemble a computer). Procedural texts may also include subgoals. Goals and subgoals are most of the time realized by means of titles and subtitles. The user must carefully follow step by step the given instructions in order to reach the goal. We introduce the notion of instructional compound, which is a complex structure that articulates instructions with various discourse elements. We then show how arguments can be extracted with the help of patterns. We finally investigate their contribution to the structure and the understanding of procedural texts.