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Computational Aspects Of Discourse AnnotationAktas, Berfin 01 December 2008 (has links) (PDF)
In this thesis, we aim to analyze the computational aspects of discourse
annotation. Discourse is not only a concatenation of sentences / in
fact the totality of discourse is more than the sum total of the sentences
that constitute it. The property that differentiates discourse from
a set of arbitrary sentences is defined as coherence. Coherence is
established by the relations between the parts of discourse. We have
a lexicalized approach to discourse, therefore in this study, discourse
relations are considered to be set up by lexical items called discourse
connectives. Systematic analysis of coherence requires an annotated
corpus in which coherence relations are encoded. We developed an
annotation environment to be used in an ongoing discourse level annotation
project which aims to generate a theory-neutral source of coherence relations.
We followed a data-driven methodology in design of the data
structure employed in the annotation software. For this reason, we examined the predicate-argument
structure of connectives. This analysis shows that stand-off annotation
technique is more suitable than an inline method for such an annotation environment.
This thesis also include a brief discussion on the formal implications of coherence relation constructions.
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Connective Position, Argument Order And Information Structure Of Discourse Connectives In Written Turkish TextsDemirsahin, Isin 01 September 2008 (has links) (PDF)
A text is a linguistic structure that is more than a random collection of sentences. A text is cohesive (Halliday & / Hasan, 1976) and coherent (Mann & / Thompson, 1987, 1988). Mainly ignored in the field of linguistics until recently, the text and the discourse structure have been inquired from various points of view (Asher, 1993 / Asher & / Lascarides, 1998 / Grosz & / Sidner, 1986 / Mann & / Thompson, 1987, 1988 / Webber, 2004).
D-LTAG is a discourse grammar work that extends a lexicalized sentence level grammar LTAG (Joshi, 1987) to low-level discourse (Webber, 2004 / Webber & / Joshi, 1998). In this framework, discourse connectives such as coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, parallel connectives and discourse adverbials are predicates of discourse structure that take text spans that can be
interpreted as abstract objects (Asher, 1993).
Turkish has a flexible word order in comparison to languages like English. In English, the discourse adverbials are noted for their ability to occupy positions unavailable to other discourse connectives. In Turkish, word order of other discourse connectives, coordinators and subordinators are not expected to be as restricted.
This thesis examines the connective position, argument order and the information structure of five Turkish discourse connectives in their eleven uses. The analyses show that the examined features of discourse connectives are related to the syntactic group the connective belongs to. Discourse connectives of the same syntactic groups
exploit similar connective position and argument order possibilities, and they tend to be included in similar information units.
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