Signalling Implicit Relations: A PDTB - RST Comparison

Lucie Poláková, Jiˇrí Mírovský, Pavlína Synková


Abstract
Describing implicit phenomena in discourse is known to be a problematic task, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The present article contributes to this topic by a novel comparative analysis of two prominent annotation approaches to discourse relations (coherence relations) that were carried out on the same texts. We compare the annotation of implicit relations in the Penn Discourse Treebank 2.0, i.e. discourse relations not signaled by an explicit discourse connective, to the recently released analysis of signals of rhetorical relations in the RST Signalling Corpus (RST-SC). The intersection of corresponding pairs of relations is rather a small one, but it shows a clear tendency: unlike the overall signal distribution in the RST-SC, more than half of the signals in the studied intersection are of semantic type, formed mostly by loosely defined lexical chains. Our data transformation allows for a simultaneous depiction and detailed study of the two resources.
Anthology ID:
2017.dnd-8.1
Volume:
Dialogue Discourse Volume 8
Month:
Year:
2017
Address:
Editors:
Amanda Stent, Maite Taboada, Raquel Fernández, David Traum, Massimo Poesio, Barbara Di Eugenio, Manfred Stede
Venue:
DND
SIG:
SIGDIAL
Publisher:
Note:
Pages:
225–248
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-dnd/2017.dnd-8.1/
DOI:
10.5087/dad.2017.210
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Lucie Poláková, Jiˇrí Mírovský, and Pavlína Synková. 2017. Signalling Implicit Relations: A PDTB - RST Comparison. Dialogue & Discourse, 8:225–248.
Cite (Informal):
Signalling Implicit Relations: A PDTB - RST Comparison (Poláková et al., DND 2017)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-dnd/2017.dnd-8.1.pdf