Empirical studies in discourse (original) (raw)

Computational Linguistics and Discourse Analysis

The profound use of the computer in discourse analysis must employ a theory of discourse comprehension and production with which to conduct the analysis. Models currently employed in computational linguistics have a semantic basis and are goal-directed. The basic model is an associative cognitive network. The basic inventory of concepts of the system is given in the systemic network, which is organized into paradigmatic, syntagmatic, and componential structures. Since events happen in particular places at particular times, there is also an episodic structure. The gnomonic system defines abstract concepts over episodes. According to Phillips (1975), discourse coherence must be considered on two levels, the episodic and the gnomic. A discourse which engenders episodic and/or gnomonic expectations which are not then fulfilled is incoherent. A lower limit on coherence may be defined as a discourse so ill-formed that it makes no sense even to its creator. The upper limit on coherence is set by the most powerful creative minds. Between the two limits, discourse analysis, from the point of view of the computational linguist, probably requires nothing less than a full-blown computational theory of the human mind. (JB)

Some Observations on the Role of Knowledge in Discourse Processing

Arboles y Rizomas. Revista de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios, 2019

In this paper, I discuss some aspects of one of the thorniest problems of the theory of discourse processing: The role of knowledge in the production and understanding of discourse. Although there are a large number of articles and books on this topic, some very fundamental questions have as yet hardly been asked. Firstly, I review the scant references to the role of knowledge in discourse processing and then I outline a tentative typology around four groups of knowledge. I then address the key question of how these different types of knowledge play a role in discourse processing, focusing on some hypothetical processes involved in the production of discourse. I finish with a call for an explicit theory of text processing that integrates context models.

Invited Paper: Discourse Structures and Language Technologies

2011

I want to tell a story about computational approaches to discourse structure. Like all such stories, it takes some liberty with actual events and times, but I think stories put things into perspective, and make it easier to understand where we are and how we might progress. Part 1 of the story (Section 2) is the past. Here we see early computational work on discourse structure aiming to assign a simple tree structure to a discourse. At issue was what its internal nodes corresponded to. The debate was fierce, and suggestions that other structures might be more appropriate were ignored or subjected to ridicule. The main uses of discourse structure were text generation and summarization, but mostly in small-scale experiments. Part 2 of the story (Section 3) is the present. We now see different types of discourse structure being recognized, though perhaps not always clearly distinguished. An increasing number of credible efforts are aimed at recognizing these structures automatically, t...