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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

This thesis discusses rhetorical features of Indonesian research articles (RAs) in three disciplinary areas: Economics, Education and Psychology. These were written by Indonesian speakers and published mainly in university-based scientific journals. The main focus of this thesis is on the examination of the patterns of communicative purposes or ‘Moves’ and their subsequent elements or ‘Steps’ of the introduction sections of these articles. The analyses include the examination of communicative purposes and persuasive values of the texts, linguistic resources used to materialise the communicative purposes and persuasions, and the cultural factors (ie. norms, beliefs and values) and scientific practices and academic writing conventions underlying the specific rhetorical features. ¶ This study found that the macro rhetorical structure of the Indonesian RAs (ie. the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion or IMRD pattern) is relatively similar to that of the English RAs except that, unlike in English RAs, the conclusion and suggestion section in the Indonesian RAs have a separate section. However, the communicative purposes and persuasions in the introduction sections in the two groups of the RAs (English and Indonesian) are relatively different. Differences are also found in the way that rhetorical works use the linguistic resources to materialise the communicative purposes and persuasions in the introduction sections of the two groups of RAs. Some of the rhetorical differences are because of the differences in the research practices and scientific writing conventions in Indonesian and in English speaking countries, while others are because of cultural differences reflected in the two languages. ¶ The pedagogical implication of this study is that the Indonesian RA genre needs to be explicitly taught to Indonesian students, particularly university students in order to give them more access to the content of Indonesian research, and to develop skills needed by Indonesian researchers and research writers. For this purpose, an appropriate approach needs to be developed; that is to teach the generic features of Indonesian RAs such as those in social sciences written in Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian.

This study examines master of art (MA) theses abstracts written in English in terms of their texual structures. In order to design a comparative study, abstracts are collected from universities (i) with a guideline in Turkey (ii) without a guideline in Turkey and (iii) with a guideline in the USA. 94 abstracts, randomly selected from these three groups of universities, are analyzed according to a content criteria list developed on the basis of Swales (1981, 1990, 2004), and Hyland&rsquo / s (2000) textual structure models and content instructions provided in thesis writing guidelines. The analysis of data is accomplished using MS Excel 2010 ve SPSS 16.0. The comparison between abstracts written at universities with and without a guideline in Turkey revealed a significant difference in terms of methodology and statement of the problem. Also, with regards to the order of the rhetorical elements (Introduction+Methodology+Results+Conclusion), universities with a guideline in Turkey displayed more consistency than the universities without a guideline. As for the comparison between the universities with a guideline in Turkey and the USA, the results showed that there is a significant difference between the two abstract sets in terms of their methodology, results, and conclusion parts. Besides, the texual pattern analysis showed that abstracts collected from universities with a guideline in Turkey follow a more consistent order than their counterparts in the USA. The results of the thesis have pedagogical implicatons for students, teachers, academics who prepare thesis writing guidelines, and researchers who want to make publications internationally.

Orientador: Antônio Suárez Abreu / Banca: Albano Dalla Pria / Banca: Eliana Izabel Scurciatto / Banca: Solange Aranha / Banca: Terezinha Fortes Mestrinelli / Resumo: A publicação de artigos em revistas científicas é fundamental para o pesquisador validar sua qualidade de membro da comunidade científica a que pertence. Publicar em revistas de prestígio requer de seus autores conhecimento não apenas das normas de apresentação e temas aceitos pela revista, mas, principalmente, dos padrões discursivos e léxico-gramaticais identificáveis nos gêneros produzidos pela comunidade científica à qual se dirigem. No entanto, para ser publicado, o artigo passa por um rigoroso processo de triagem em função da grande quantidade de trabalhos submetidos. O primeiro critério de seleção é a qualidade do abstract, gênero que tem a função de apresentar sucintamente o artigo que representa, dando-lhe visibilidade perante o comitê editorial. Entretanto, uma vez publicado, o artigo de pesquisa compete com tantos outros para ser lido e possivelmente citado em novos trabalhos, passando, novamente, por um processo de seleção através do abstract que, desta vez, é analisado pelos pesquisadores que buscam trabalhos que tragam contribuições. Assim, em função da relevância desse gênero na promoção do artigo de pesquisa, visando à sua publicação junto a revistas de prestígio e à sua leitura por outros pesquisadores, a presente tese de doutorado propõe um roteiro de escrita que auxilie o pesquisador na produção de abstracts de artigo de pesquisa. Tendo em vista que um abstract eficiente deve refletir as convenções nos planos retórico, argumentativo e léxico-gramatical da comunidade científica à qual se dirige, este trabalho abarca os domínios do gênero e da argumentação. No domínio do gênero, abordamos os conceitos de comunidade discursiva e gênero acadêmico de Swales (1990, 1992, 1998), analisamos a estrutura retórica de 150 abstracts (Biologia Celular, Medicina, Direito, Educação, Física, Matemática) e levantamos os expedientes... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Getting published is the researcher's most important step toward being recognized as a legitimate member of his scientific community. Succeeding in getting research articles published in accredited scientific journals requires from the authors knowledge about the requirements for manuscripts, the themes covered and the discursive and lexical-grammatical patterns which can be identified in the various genres produced by the scientific communities they address. Nevertheless, the paper has to go through a two-stage analysis by the journal's editorial committee before being published due to the large number of manuscripts submitted. In the first stage, what is examined is the abstract, genre whose purpose is to present the article briefly but in a way in which it gains visibility before the editorial board. If it is well written and appeals to the examiners, the analysis progresses to the next stage where the article itself will be analyzed to be approved for publication. However, once it is published, the article competes with so many others to be read and cited in other papers. Then it is scrutinized again through the abstract, but this time by other researchers who are interested in its contributions. Thus, due to the central role the abstract plays in persuading the editorial board to select the article for further assessment toward its acceptance for publication, and other researchers to read it, here we devise a plan for research article abstract writing. Since an effective abstract must reflect the rhetorical, argumentative and lexical-grammatical conventions of the scientific community it addresses, this PhD thesis encompasses two domains: genre and argumentation. In the domain of genre, we discuss the concepts of discourse community and genre (SWALES, 1990, 1992, 1998), analyze the rhetorical structure of 150 abstracts... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

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.