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The present work describes coherence structure of English and Czech book introductions. The account of coherence is based on Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988; Mann and Taboada, 2006) which posits that majority of texts have one main effect which can be described by one of their inventory of thirty-two rhetorical relations; other relations are organized in a hierarchical structure and contribute to the main effect. Out of thirty monographs compiled for each language, four book introductions were chosen to represent the English language and four to represent the Czech language. The data were annotated in terms of rhetorical structure. The qualitative analysis showed that the genre of book introduction does not differ across languages as all texts were described by the same top-level relations; the only difference concerns the position of the goal of the monograph. The queantitative analysis showed that the difference on lower levels concerns the presentation of past research: Czech focused more on presenting elements of subject-matter. Key words: coherence, rhetorical relations, Rhetorical Structure Theory, book introductions, English, Czech, monographs, genre

Com uma quantidade quase incontável de informação textual disponível na web, a automatização de diversas tarefas referentes ao processamento automático de textos é uma necessidade inegável. Em abordagens superficiais do PLN (Processamento da Linguagem Natural), importantes propriedades do texto são perdidas, como posição, ordem, adjacência e contexto dos segmentos textuais. Uma análise textual mais profunda, como a realizada no nível do discurso, ocupa-se da busca e identificação da organização retórica do texto, gerando uma estrutura hierárquica em que as intenções do autor são explicitadas e relacionadas entre si. Para a automatização dessa tarefa, tem-se utilizado técnicas de aprendizado automático, predominantemente do paradigma supervisionado. Nesse paradigma, são necessários dados rotulados manualmente para a geração dos modelos de classificação. Como a anotação para essa tarefa é algo custoso, os resultados obtidos no aprendizado são insatisfatórios, pois estão bem aquém do desempenho humano na mesma tarefa. Nesta tese, o uso massivo de dados não rotulados no aprendizado semissupervisionado sem fim foi empregado na tarefa de identificação das relações retóricas. Foi proposto um framework que utiliza textos obtidos continuamente da web. No framework, realiza-se a monitoração da mudança de conceito, que pode ocorrer durante o aprendizado contínuo, e emprega-se uma variação dos algoritmos tradicionais de semissupervisão. Além disso, foram adaptados para o Português técnicas do estado da arte. Sem a necessidade de anotação humana, a medida-F melhorou, por enquanto, em 0,144 (de 0,543 para 0,621). Esse resultado consiste no estado da arte da análise discursiva automática para o Português. / Considering the almost uncountable textual information available on the web, the auto- matization of several tasks related to the automatic text processing is an undeniable need. In superficial approaches of NLP (Natural Language Processing), important properties of the text are lost, as position, order, adjacency and context of textual segments. A de- eper analysis, as carried out in the discursive level, deals with the identification of the rhetoric organization of the text, generating a hierarchical structure. In this structure, the intentions of the author are identified and related among them. To the automati- zation of this task, most of the works have used machine learning techniques, mainly from the supervised paradigm. In this paradigm, manually labeled data is required to obtain classification models, specially to identify the rhetorical relations. As the manual annotation is a costly process, the obtained results in the task are unsatisfactory, because they are below the human perfomance. In this thesis, the massive use of unlabeled data was applied in a semi-supervised never-ending learning to identify the rhetorical relations. In this exploration, a framework was proposed, which uses texts continuously obtained from the web. In the framework, a variation of traditional semi-supervised algorithms was employed, and it uses a concept-drift monitoring strategy. Besides that, state of the art techniques for English were adapted to Portuguese. Without the human intervention, the F-measure increased, for while, 0.144 (from 0.543 to 0.621). This result consists in the state-of-the-art for Discourse Analysis in Portuguese.

Com uma quantidade quase incontável de informação textual disponível na web, a automatização de diversas tarefas referentes ao processamento automático de textos é uma necessidade inegável. Em abordagens superficiais do PLN (Processamento da Linguagem Natural), importantes propriedades do texto são perdidas, como posição, ordem, adjacência e contexto dos segmentos textuais. Uma análise textual mais profunda, como a realizada no nível do discurso, ocupa-se da busca e identificação da organização retórica do texto, gerando uma estrutura hierárquica em que as intenções do autor são explicitadas e relacionadas entre si. Para a automatização dessa tarefa, tem-se utilizado técnicas de aprendizado automático, predominantemente do paradigma supervisionado. Nesse paradigma, são necessários dados rotulados manualmente para a geração dos modelos de classificação. Como a anotação para essa tarefa é algo custoso, os resultados obtidos no aprendizado são insatisfatórios, pois estão bem aquém do desempenho humano na mesma tarefa. Nesta tese, o uso massivo de dados não rotulados no aprendizado semissupervisionado sem fim foi empregado na tarefa de identificação das relações retóricas. Foi proposto um framework que utiliza textos obtidos continuamente da web. No framework, realiza-se a monitoração da mudança de conceito, que pode ocorrer durante o aprendizado contínuo, e emprega-se uma variação dos algoritmos tradicionais de semissupervisão. Além disso, foram adaptados para o Português técnicas do estado da arte. Sem a necessidade de anotação humana, a medida-F melhorou, por enquanto, em 0,144 (de 0,543 para 0,621). Esse resultado consiste no estado da arte da análise discursiva automática para o Português. / Considering the almost uncountable textual information available on the web, the auto- matization of several tasks related to the automatic text processing is an undeniable need. In superficial approaches of NLP (Natural Language Processing), important properties of the text are lost, as position, order, adjacency and context of textual segments. A de- eper analysis, as carried out in the discursive level, deals with the identification of the rhetoric organization of the text, generating a hierarchical structure. In this structure, the intentions of the author are identified and related among them. To the automati- zation of this task, most of the works have used machine learning techniques, mainly from the supervised paradigm. In this paradigm, manually labeled data is required to obtain classification models, specially to identify the rhetorical relations. As the manual annotation is a costly process, the obtained results in the task are unsatisfactory, because they are below the human perfomance. In this thesis, the massive use of unlabeled data was applied in a semi-supervised never-ending learning to identify the rhetorical relations. In this exploration, a framework was proposed, which uses texts continuously obtained from the web. In the framework, a variation of traditional semi-supervised algorithms was employed, and it uses a concept-drift monitoring strategy. Besides that, state of the art techniques for English were adapted to Portuguese. Without the human intervention, the F-measure increased, for while, 0.144 (from 0.543 to 0.621). This result consists in the state-of-the-art for Discourse Analysis in Portuguese.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:11:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 12 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Nesta dissertação de mestrado, procuro mostrar a contribuição de determinadas concepções de organização textual para a representação do texto realizada pelo modelo da Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST (Mann; Thompson, 1988). A RST é uma teoria que explica a estrutura textual por meio de um modelo de relações que se estabelecem, recursivamente, entre partes do texto consideradas pelo analista como núcleos e satélites. Porém, apesar de abarcar a coerência retórica relacional, a RST, como teoria, não lida com outras concepções que dêem conta do processo complexo de organização textual. Dessa forma, como modelo, ela representa o texto de forma limitada. Neste trabalho, investigo a possibilidade de a RST ser associada a determinadas concepções de organização textual, como a relação entre texto e contexto e o processo estratégico top-down de formação do texto. Para tanto, realizo uma investigação em duas partes: uma teórica e uma de análise. Na parte teórica, apresento um quadro teórico que embasa as concepções de / In this master’s degree paper work, I aim to show the contribution of some conceptions of textual organization to the text representing process carried out by Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST (Mann; Thompson, 1988). RST is a theory that explains the text structure by postulating a model of relations which recursively hold between parts of text labeled nucleus or satellite by the analyst. However, even accounting for the rhetorical relational coherence, RST, as a theory, doesn’t include other conceptions to account for the complex process of textual organization. Thus, as a model, it produces a limited text representation. In this paper work, I investigate the possibility of associating RST with some conceptions of textual organization, like the relationship between text and context and the top-down strategic process of text construction. To do so, I carry out an investigation in two parts: a theoretical one and an analytical one. In the theoretical part, I show a theoretical framework that supports the conce

Submitted by William Justo Figueiro (williamjf) on 2015-07-09T22:47:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 28b.pdf: 928828 bytes, checksum: 03bf0090fd6d0473043b76c6366d0c61 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-09T22:47:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 28b.pdf: 928828 bytes, checksum: 03bf0090fd6d0473043b76c6366d0c61 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-22 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente estudo busca investigar as relações retóricas que emergem do encaixe de segmentos narrativos na organização macroestrutural de notícias de divulgação científica (DC) dirigidas aos públicos infantil e adulto. A organização narrativa é analisada segundo os postulados de Adam (2011) e Charaudeau (2008b); a organização retórica macroestrutural dos textos, por sua vez, é estudada de acordo com a Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST. (MANN; THOMPSON, 1988). O corpus do estudo é composto de 15 notícias de DC voltadas ao público infantil, publicadas na revista Ciência Hoje das Crianças entre dezembro de 2004 e setembro de 2010, e de 15 notícias de DC direcionadas ao público adulto, veiculadas na revista Ciência Hoje, entre agosto de 2005 e julho de 2012. A metodologia empregada consiste na análise quantitativa da emergência de relações retóricas entre os segmentos narrativos encontrados nos corpora (infantil e adulto) e as demais porções textuais, bem como na análise qualitativa de alguns textos selecionados para exemplificar cada uma das relações retóricas encontradas. Em seguida, é realizada uma análise comparativa entre os dados quantitativos provenientes das análises dos textos para crianças e dos textos para adultos. Assume-se que a esquematização de um texto é um processo de coconstrução, no qual o produtor, ao organizar seu plano textual, leva em consideração as características e conhecimentos de seu possível leitor e, a partir disso, lança mão de estratégias variadas para alcançar o fim discursivo pretendido e causar os efeitos desejados sobre o leitor. Dessa forma, conclui-se que a emergência recorrente de determinadas relações retóricas entre as narrativas encaixadas e as outras partes do texto revela estratégias do produtor textual para orientar a leitura e compreensão da notícia, tanto nos textos escritos para crianças quanto nos escritos para adultos. / This research aims to investigate the rhetorical relations which emerge from the insertion of narrative segments in the macrostructural organization of scientific popularization news directed to children and adults. The narrative organization is analyzed according to Adam’s (2011) and Charaudeau’s (2008b) postulates; the rhetorical organization of the texts, in turn, is studied according to Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST. (MANN; THOMPSON, 1988). The research corpus is composed of 15 scientific popularization news intended for children, published in the magazine Ciência Hoje das Crianças, and of 15 scientific popularization news directed to adults, issued in the magazine Ciência Hoje. The methodology consists of a quantitative analysis of the emergency of rhetorical relations between the narrative segments found in the corpora (texts for children and texts for adults) and other textual portions, as well as of a qualitative analysis of some selected texts in order to exemplify each one of the rhetorical relations found. Then, a comparative analysis is done between the quantitative data resultant from the analysis of the texts for children and of the texts for adults. We assume that the schematization of a text is a process of co-construction, in which the producer, when organizes the text plan, takes into consideration the characteristics and knowledge of his/her possible reader and, from this, resorts to different strategies in order to achieve the discursive aim intended and cause the desired effect over the reader. Thus, we conclude that the recurrent emergency of certain rhetorical relations between the inserted narratives and the other portions of the text reveals strategies of the textual producer in order to guide the reading and comprehension of the new, both in texts written forchildren and in texts written for adults.

This thesis investigates the relationship between creative potential and the rhetorical structure of children&rsquo / s narratives. 44 middle school children (aged 12-15) were given a set of paper-pen activities including one divergent thinking test, one convergent thinking test and a story to be completed. Results of the divergent and convergent thinking tests were taken as the predictors to estimate the potential for creative thinking. Children were examined in terms of how they encode rhetorical relations in their writings. Whether a creative potential made a difference in children&rsquo / s writings in terms of rhetorical relations they used, and whether children within the same creative potential group used the same rhetorical relations in common were investigated. Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (Marcu, 2000 and Carlson and Marcu, 2001) was used in coding children&rsquo / s writings. It was found that children in the study interpreted story writing as an act of attribution. This result is contrary to Marcu et.al (1999b), who found the elaboration-additional relation as the most frequent relation in their corpora. The study also found that there was an inverse relationship between the convergent thinking scores and the number of satellites (an EDU (elementary discourse unit) playing an auxilliary role for a text in question) for the 7th graders. Finally, it was found that high quartile (highest scorers in the study, top 25%) convergent thinkers were able to construct a narrative element with few number of EDUs and few number of discourse relation types.

ITSs (Intelligent Tutoring Systems) provide a way of addressing some of the issues that the more traditional CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) systems do not address - the individual learning needs and individual learning abilities and levels of users - so that the user is in control of their learning experience. An ITS needs to be able to provide an explanation, for a real world situation, that successfully meets the needs of the user. To ensure relevant explanation content requires the ITS be based on sound planning principles and tutoring knowledge as well as knowledge of the domain and the user. To ensure a coherent explanation structure requires that the tutoring knowledge be applied with full recognition of the knowledge of the domain and the user. For a model of the user's knowledge to be effective, the system should be able to use it to enhance the flexibility and responsiveness of explanations generated. A user model should guide the generation of explanations so they are pitched at the correct level of the user's existing knowledge; models should be able to actively support the needs of the user so that the user's efforts in seeking out information are minimised. The aim of this research is to generate effective, flexible and responsive explanations, in educational software systems, through developing better explanation facilities than exist in currently available ITS software. In achieving this aim, I am advancing research into dialogue planning and user modelling. The explanation facilities described meet the requirements of an explanation that is tailored to the user's needs, a sound theory from which particular explanations are constructed, and a user model that can accurately represent the behaviour and beliefs of the user. My research contributions include explicitly and formally representing discourse planning / reasoning, from both the user's view and the tutor's view so that they can be clearly understood and represented in the ITS. More recent planners have adopted approaches that can be characterised as using adaptations of the classical planning approach, with informally specified planning algorithms and planning languages. Without clear, explicit and full descriptions of actions and the planning algorithm we can not be certain of the plans that such planners produce. I adopt a theoretically rigorous approach based on classical planning theory - the actions available to the planner, the planning language and algorithm should be explicitly represented to ensure that plans are complete and consistent. Classical regression planning uses dynamic planning thus enabling the system to be flexible in a variety of situations and providing the responsiveness required for an ITS. I take a theoretically rigorous approach in constructing a well specified model of discourse, building upon existing research in the area. I present a tutoring module that is able to find a way to motivate the user to take a recommended action, by relating the action to the user's goals, and that is able to reason about the text structure to generate an effective explanation - putting together several clauses of text whilst maintaining coherency. As part of developing such constructs for motivating, enabling and recommending, as well as constructs for structuring text, I use a pedagogic model based on the principled approach of (i) advising the user to take an action (ii) motivating the user to want to take the action and (iii) ensuring the user knows how to do the action. I take a clear and realistic approach to user modelling, making explicit models of the user's behaviour and beliefs. I adopt a theoretically rigorous approach, formally distinguishing between the user's reasoning and their actions, so they can be focused on separately. Formally making this distinction, more easily enables models of the user's reasoning to be tailored to the individual user. To enable the tutor to consider the full impact on the user, of the information to be delivered to the user, I use different plan spaces. I explicitly identify the different perspectives of the user and the tutor so that they can be focused on separately to generate an explanation that is tailored to the user. In my approach, reasoning about the user's skills, rules and knowledge is independent from reasoning about those of the tutor.

This thesis deals with the correlative markers d’une part… d’autre part, d’un côté… de l’autre and non seulement… mais in French and their Swedish counterparts dels… dels, å ena sidan… å andra sidan and inte bara… utan. These markers are composed of two separate parts generally occurring together, and announce a serial of at least two textual units to be considered together. The analyses of the use of these three French and three Swedish markers are based upon two corpora of non-academic humanities texts. The first, principal corpus, is composed only of original French and Swedish texts. The second, complementary corpus, is composed of source texts in the two languages and their translations in the other language. By the combination of these two corpora, this study is comparative as well as contrastive. Through application of the Geneva model of discourse analysis and the Rhetorical Structure Theory, a semantic and functional approach to correlative markers and their text-structural role is adopted. The study shows similarities as well as differences between the six markers, both within each language and between the languages. D’une part… d’autre part and dels… dels principally mark a conjunctive relation, whereas d’un côté… de l’autre and å ena sidan… å andra sidan more often are used in  a contrastive relation, even though they all can be used for both kinds of relations. Non seulement… mais and inte bara… utan mark a conjunctive relation, but can also indicate that the second argument is stronger than the first one. By the use of these two markers, the language users also present the first one as given and the second one as new information. In general, the French correlative markers appear to have a more argumentative function, whereas the text-structural function is demonstrated to be the most important in Swedish.

Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή προτείνει ένα εννοιολογικό πλαίσιο σχεδιασμού μαθησιακών αντικειμένων το οποίο εμφορείται από την Κοινωνική Σημειωτική και από τη Θεωρία της Ρητορικής Δομής. Προτείνεται μια θεώρηση των μαθησιακών αντικειμένων ως πολυτροπικών ψηφιακών κειμενικών μακρο-ειδών τα οποία αποτελούνται από ψηφιακά κειμενικά μικρο-είδη. Η οργάνωση του μαθησιακού περιεχομένου μοντελοποιείται μέσα από διάφορα συστημικά δίκτυα τα οποία αναπαριστούν τις σχεδιαστικές επιλογές του δημιουργού των μαθησιακών αντικειμένων. Με αυτό το σημειωτικό πλαίσιο στη διάθεσή του ένας δημιουργός μαθησιακών αντικειμένων μπορεί να εξοπλιστεί με τα εννοιολογικά εκείνα εργαλεία τα οποία θα του επιτρέψουν: α) να δημιουργήσει ή να χρησιμοποιήσει διάφορους τύπους κειμενικών μικρο-ειδών σύμφωνα με τις επικοινωνιακές λειτουργίες που αυτά εξυπηρετούν, β) να συνδέσει μεταξύ τους αυτούς τους τύπους μέσα από μια σειρά συζευκτικών σχέσεων και γ) να εκφράσει μέσα στο μαθησιακό περιεχόμενο τις επικοινωνιακές του προθέσεις απέναντι σε μια συγκεκριμένη ομάδα – στόχο χρηστών. / This thesis proposes a conceptual framework for designing learning objects which is imbued by Social Semiotics and Rhetoric Structure Theory. An outlook of learning objects as digital multimodal macrogenres composed by digital microgenres is proposed. The organization of learning content is modeled through several systemic networks which represent the design choices of the learning objects’ author. With this semiotic framework at his disposal, a learning objects’ author can be equipped with those conceptual tools that will enable him: a) to create or use different types of microgenres according to the communicative functions they serve, b) to link these types through a series of conjunctive relations and c) to express within the learning content his communicative intentions towards a particular target group of users.