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Signaling Coherence Relations in Text Generation: a Case Study of German Temporal Discourse Markers

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Signaling Coherence Relations in Text Generation: a Case Study of German Temporal Discourse Markers . Signaling coherence relations in text generation: A case study of German temporal discourse markers Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorw¨urde durch den Promotionsausschuss Dr. phil der Universit¨at Bremen vorgelegt von Brigitte Grote Berlin, den 29. Januar 2003 Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation.................................... 1 1.1.1 Discoursemarkersinwrittentext . .. 2 1.1.2 Discourse marker choice in text generation . ..... 6 1.2 Scopeofthestudy ............................... 8 1.3 Goalsofthisresearch............................. 9 1.4 Organizationofthethesis . .. 11 I State of the art and methodology 15 2 Earlier research on discourse markers 17 2.1 Definitionsinresearchliterature . ...... 17 2.1.1 Terminologyanddefinitions . 18 2.1.2 Identifying discourse markers in text . .... 21 2.2 Discourse markers in multilingual generation . ......... 23 2.2.1 Marker occurrence and placement . 25 2.2.2 Markerselection ............................ 26 2.2.3 Discourse marker choice in the overall generation process ...... 33 2.3 Discourse markers in descriptive linguistics . .......... 36 2.3.1 In-depth studies of small sets of discourse markers . ........ 37 2.3.2 Accounts covering a large range of discourse markers . ....... 38 2.4 Conclusions ................................... 41 i ii CONTENTS 3 Discourse representation in TG 43 3.1 Introduction: Coherence relations in text generation . ............ 43 3.2 RhetoricalStructureTheory . ... 46 3.2.1 RSTintextanalysis .......................... 46 3.2.2 RSTinautomatictextgeneration . 49 3.3 EnhancingRST................................. 53 3.3.1 Setofrelations ............................. 53 3.3.2 Minimalunits.............................. 56 3.3.3 Language specificity and relation to the linguistic surface ...... 57 3.3.4 Types of relations and levels of discourse representation....... 59 3.3.5 Decomposing coherence relations . .. 63 3.4 Conclusions ................................... 66 4 Framework and methodology 69 4.1 Framework.................................... 69 4.2 Methodologicalissues. .. 73 4.2.1 Stage 1: Compiling sets of discourse markers for English and German 73 4.2.2 Stage 2: Providing hypotheses on relevant features . ....... 89 4.2.3 Stage 3: Analysing individual discourse markers . ....... 90 4.2.4 Stage 4: Describing marker usage—a functional approach...... 93 4.2.5 Stage 5: Defining the input structure to marker choice processes . 93 4.2.6 Stage 6: Resource for representing discourse marker knowledge . 94 4.2.7 Stage 7: Selecting discourse markers . ... 94 II Linguistic analysis of German temporal discourse markers 97 5 Prerequisites and dimensions 99 5.1 Discourse markers in technical instructional texts . ........... 99 5.2 German temporal discourse markers: Prerequisites . .......... 101 5.2.1 Scopeofstudy ............................. 104 5.2.2 Earlier research: Descriptive studies on temporal discourse markers 105 CONTENTS iii 5.3 Dimensions of temporal marker description . ....... 106 5.3.1 Temporalrelations . .. .. 108 5.3.2 Intentions ................................ 116 5.3.3 FocusandPresuppositions . 117 5.3.4 Situationtype.............................. 118 5.3.5 Aktionsart................................ 120 5.3.6 Aspect.................................. 122 5.3.7 Verbaltense............................... 124 5.3.8 Orderingofrelata............................ 126 5.3.9 Positionofdiscoursemarker . 127 5.3.10 Part of speech; syntactic structure . ..... 128 5.3.11 Temporalquantifiers . 128 5.3.12 Style................................... 128 6 Comprehensive analysis 131 6.1 Nachdem,nachanddanach .......................... 131 6.1.1 Nachdem ................................ 132 6.1.2 Nach................................... 142 6.1.3 Danach,dann,daraufhin . 143 6.2 Sobaldandsowie ................................ 144 6.3 Kaumdass.................................... 149 6.4 Seit(dem),seitandab ............................. 150 6.4.1 Seitdemandseit ............................ 150 6.4.2 Seit(preposition) ............................ 154 6.4.3 Ab.................................... 155 6.5 Bevor,voranddavor .............................. 156 6.5.1 Bevor .................................. 156 6.5.2 Vor.................................... 163 6.5.3 Davor,vorher,zuvor . .. .. 164 6.6 Ehe........................................ 165 6.7 BisandBis(P) ................................. 165 iv CONTENTS 6.7.1 Bis.................................... 165 6.7.2 Bis(preposition) ............................ 171 6.8 W¨ahrend, w¨ahrend(P), und w¨ahrenddessen . ........ 172 6.8.1 W¨ahrend................................. 172 6.8.2 W¨ahrend (preposition), bei and mit . 178 6.8.3 W¨ahrenddessen ............................. 180 6.9 Solange ..................................... 180 6.10Alsandwenn .................................. 186 6.10.1 Als.................................... 186 6.10.2 Wenn .................................. 190 6.11Sooft....................................... 191 7 Functional description 195 7.1 Martinrevisited................................. 195 7.2 Building conjunctive relation networks . ....... 197 7.2.1 Linguistic analysis and conjunctive relation networks ........ 197 7.2.2 Methodologicalissues. 198 7.2.3 Building German temporal conjunctive relation networks ...... 201 7.3 Germantemporalconjunctiverelations . ...... 204 7.3.1 Thesystemnetwork . .. .. 204 7.3.2 Realizations of temporal conjunctive relations . ........ 209 7.3.3 Ambiguity of temporal discourse markers . .... 212 7.4 ComparisonwithEnglishandDutch . 214 7.4.1 English and Dutch temporal conjunctive relations . ....... 215 7.4.2 Dimensionsofcomparison . 219 7.4.3 Similarities and differences between functional classifications . 220 7.4.4 Temporal conjunctive relation networks in multilingual generation . 227 III Lexical modelling and application 229 8 Modelling the discourse level 231 CONTENTS v 8.1 Basic assumptions about the discourse level . ....... 231 8.1.1 Problems with RST in the context of discourse marker choice . 232 8.1.2 Discourserepresentation . 233 8.2 Coherence relations in technical instructional texts . ............ 237 8.2.1 Approach to identifying relations . 237 8.2.2 Ideationalrelations . 238 8.2.3 Intentions or interpersonal relations . ...... 253 8.2.4 Textualrelations ............................ 257 8.3 The system network: Classifying relations . ....... 258 8.3.1 Motivatingtheinventory offeatures. .... 259 8.3.2 Thesystemnetwork . .. .. 268 8.4 Discoursestructure .............................. 271 8.5 Applying coherence relations to text . ..... 273 8.5.1 Sampletextanalyses . .. .. 273 8.5.2 Verbalizing coherence relations . 280 9 The discourse marker lexicon 285 9.1 Motivating a discourse marker lexicon . ...... 285 9.1.1 Discourse markers: Lexical choice or structural decision? . 286 9.1.2 Representing lexical information . .... 288 9.2 Representing discourse marker knowledge in a lexicon . .......... 293 9.2.1 Lexicondesign ............................. 293 9.2.2 The treatment of discourse markers in existing lexica ........ 295 9.3 Proposal for a discourse marker lexicon . ...... 299 9.3.1 Organizationofthelexicon. 300 9.3.2 Information contained in the discourse marker lexicon........ 302 9.3.3 EAGLES-like representation of discourse markers . ....... 307 10 Selecting discourse markers 311 10.1Background ................................... 311 10.1.1 Overview of the generation architecture . ...... 311 vi CONTENTS 10.1.2 Approach to sentence planning . 314 10.2 A generation lexicon for discourse markers . ........ 315 10.2.1 Representing discourse markers for generation purposes. 315 10.2.2 Globalorganizationofthelexicon . .... 317 10.2.3 Lexiconentry .............................. 318 10.2.4 Lexicon entries for temporal discourse markers . ........ 319 10.3 Selecting temporal discourse markers . ....... 330 10.3.1 Ontologicaldefinitions . 330 10.3.2 General procedure for selecting discourse markers . ......... 332 10.3.3 Procedure for selecting temporal discourse markers ......... 340 10.4Examples .................................... 343 10.4.1 Example 1: Variation in applicability conditions . ......... 344 10.4.2 Example 2: Variation in combinability constraints . ......... 349 10.4.3 Example 3: Variation along all dimensions . ..... 352 10.4.4 Example 4: Multilingual example from the corpus . ...... 357 11 Summary and conclusions 371 11.1 Summaryofthethesisresearch . 371 11.2 Contributionsofthethesis . .... 375 11.3 Directionsforfutureresearch . ..... 378 A Corpus of technical instructions 401 A.1 Monolingualtexts................................ 401 A.2 Bilingual texts (German, English) . ..... 402 B German lexicon entries 403 List of Figures 1.1 Extract from a newspaper article on prospective labour shortage in Ger- many. Reproduced from S¨uddeutsche Zeitung, June 19th,2001 ....... 3 1.2 ExtractfromtheHondaCiviccarmanual . ... 4 2.1 Test for connectives from [Pasch et al.,inprep.] ............... 21 2.2 Test for relational phrases, reproduced from [Knott 1996,p64]........ 22 3.1 Identification schema, sample text and analysis [McKeown1985,p28] . 45 3.2 Definition of the concession relation as given in [Mann and Thompson 1987] 47 3.3 Extract from a Honda car manual and corresponding RST analysis . 48 3.4 Plan operator for the RST-relation sequence as defined in [Hovy 1991, p89] 49 3.5 Plan operators for the high-level goal ‘persuade-user-to-do-an-act’ and the motivation relation reproduced from [Moore and Paris 1993, p17] . 50 3.6 Informational
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