DiMLex: A Lexicon of Discorse Markers for Text Generation and Understanding

Discourse markers ('cue words') are lexical items that signal the kind of coherence relation holding between adjacent text spans; for example, because, since, and for this reason are different markers for causal relations. Discourse markers are a syntactically quite heterogeneous group of words, many of which are traditionally treated as function words belonging to the realm of grammar rather than to the lexicon. But for a single discourse relation there is often a set of similar markers, allowing for a range of paraphrases for expressing the relation. To capture the similarities and differences between these, and to represent them adequately, we are developing DiMLex, a lexicon of discourse markers. After describing our methodology and the kind of information to be represented in DiMLex, we briefly discuss its potential applications in both text generation and understanding.