Theoretical approaches mostly associate stressed additive particles (e.g., auch in German) with contrastive topics. Empirical data show that associated constituents are produced more prominently than unassociated ones but not that they are contrastive topics. This paper compares the prosodic realizations of associated constituents with contrastive and non-contrastive topics. We found no differe...

We derive the rhetorical structures of texts by means of two new, surface-form-based algorithms: one that identifies discourse usages of cue phrases and breaks sentences into clauses, and one that produces valid rhetorical structure trees for unrestricted natural language texts. The algorithms use information that was derived from a corpus analysis of cue phrases.

This paper discusses a fundamental problem in natural language generation: how to organize the content of a text in a coherent and natural way. In this research, we set out to determine the semantic content and the rhetorical structure of texts and to develop heuristics to perform this process automatically within a text generation framework. The study was performed on a specific language and t...

Citations in scientific writing fulfil an important role in creating relationships among mutually relevant articles within a research field. These inter-article relationships reinforce the argumentation structure intrinsic to all scientific writing. Therefore, determining the nature of the exact relationship between a citing and cited paper requires an understanding of the rhetorical relations ...

This paper represents a pilot investigation of primed accentuation patterns produced by advanced Dutch speakers of Italian as a second language (L2). Contrastive accent patterns within prepositional phrases were elicited in a semispontaneous dialogue entertained with a confederate native speaker of Italian. The aim of the analysis was to compare learner’s contrastive accentual configurations in...

This paper represents a pilot investigation of accentuation patterns produced by advanced Dutch speakers of Italian as a second language (L2). Contrastive accent patterns within phrases were elicited in a semi-spontaneous dialogue entertained with a confederate native speaker of Italian. The aim of the analysis was to compare learners’ contrastive accentual configurations induced by the confede...

0. Introduction Features which pattern as inert with respect to phonological processes are often unnecessary in distinguishing segments in an inventory. The relationship between phonological activity and contrastiveness has been modeled in theories of underspecification (e.g. Archangeli 1984, Steriade 1987). However, there is no consensus on how to determine which features are contrastive. The ...

The availability of huge amounts of online opinions has created a new need to develop effective query-based opinion summarizers to analyze this information in order to facilitate decision making at every level. To develop an effective opinion summarization approach, we have targeted to resolve specifically Question Irrelevancy and Discourse Incoherency problems which have been found to be the m...

Sentences with contrastive intonation are assumed to presuppose contextual alternatives to the accented elements. Two cross-modal priming experiments tested in Dutch whether such contextual alternatives are automatically available to listeners. Contrastive associates – but not noncontrastive associates were facilitated only when primes were produced in sentences with contrastive intonation, ind...