How Complex is Discourse Structure?

Markus Egg, Gisela Redeker

Abstract
This paper contributes to the question of which degree of complexity is called for in representations of discourse structure. We review recent claims that tree structures do not suffice as a model for discourse structure, with a focus on the work done on the Discourse Graphbank (DGB) of Wolf and Gibson (2005, 2006). We will show that much of the additional complexity in the DGB is not inherent in the data, but due to specific design choices that underlie W&G’s annotation. Three kinds of configuration are identified whose DGB analysis violates tree-structure constraints, but for which an analysis in terms of tree structures is possible, viz., crossed dependencies that are eventually based on lexical or referential overlap, multiple-parent structures that could be handled in terms of Marcu’s (1996) Nuclearity Principle, and potential list structures, in which whole lists of segments are related to a preceding segment in the same way. We also discuss the recent results which Lee et al. (2008) adduce as evidence for a complexity of discourse structure that cannot be handled in terms of tree structures.
Anthology ID:
L10-1547
Volume:
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10)
Month:
May
Year:
2010
Address:
Valletta, Malta
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis, Mike Rosner, Daniel Tapias
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
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Pages:
Language:
URL:
http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/796_Paper.pdf
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Markus Egg and Gisela Redeker. 2010. How Complex is Discourse Structure?. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10), Valletta, Malta. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
How Complex is Discourse Structure? (Egg & Redeker, LREC 2010)
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PDF:
http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/796_Paper.pdf
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