This paper provides a uniform semantic framework for Topic-Comment Structures in Chinese. It is assumed that the topic element relates to an anaphor occuring in the comment. The comment which contains an unresolved anaphor is semantically underspecified. The semantic interpretation of topic-comment constructions results from the resolution of the anaphoric relation between topic and comment. In...

This paper presents a rule based approach to extraction of dialog acts and topics from utterances in a spoken dialog system, SDSKIT-3, with a task-independent dialog controller which is based on an extension of the framedriven method. We demonstrated it could control dialogs in several different task domains, only given a set of topic frames and a set of rules manually designed for the discours...

We report the results of an empirical study which aims to describe the discourse function of rises at right edge intonation boundaries in French. A Map-Task corpus containing two dialogues was annotated for IP boundaries and pitch transition points with the INTSINT intonational alphabet. The transcripts of the dialogues were labeled for dialogue structure and dialogue acts, using form and funct...

Social media provides a unique platform enabling public discourse around cross-cutting ideologies. In this paper, we provide a methodological lens for studying the discourses around the controversial topic of abortion on social media. Drawing from the theoretical framework of “Critical Discourse Analysis”, we study discourse around abortion on Twitter through analysis of language and the manife...

The present study is a corpus analysis of discourse prosodic information using two different types of fluent continuous Mandarin speech. Global F0 heights and duration patterns of withinand between-paragraph phrases were compared by discourse positions. Results showed that overall phrase-level F0 height was paragraph-initial>-medial>-final while the tempo pattern was paragraph-initial<-medial<-...

Although the language we encounter is typically embedded in rich discourse contexts, many existing models of processing focus largely on phenomena that occur sentence-internally. Similarly, most work on children's language learning does not consider how information can accumulate as a discourse progresses. Research in pragmatics, however, points to ways in which each subsequent utterance provid...

The array of perspectives from which discourse processing is pursued can be mindboggling to students of discourse, both new and experienced. We are bombarded with concepts from various arenas that require sorting out: topic and focus, given and new, cohesion and coherence; the list goes on. Many questions loom for the computational linguistics (CL) researcher. What do notions such as topic and ...

This paper is concerned with the robust analysis of the discourse structure of a text via underspecification. Most current discourse theories (e.g. Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) by Mann and Thompson (1988), Abduction by Hobbs et al. (1993) or Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) by Asher (1993)) require detailed world and context knowledge for the derivation of the discourse str...

At present, discourse parsing is an important research topic. Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is one of the most popular approaches in this field. In general, discourse parsing includes three stages: discourse segmentation, discourse relations detection and building up rhetorical trees. Different strategies are used when developing discourse parsers. One of the strategies to detect discourse ...

Recent studies have shown that speakers and writers use linguistic devices to signal a shift of topic in their discourse. The present paper considers the comprehension function of one of these segmentation markers, namely a temporal adverbial, by studying its role in a well-established boundary effect: Reading time for the first sentence of a new discourse unit is longer than reading time for t...