This paper is concerned with heuristics for segmenting narratives into units that form the basic elements of discourse representations and that constrain the application of focusing algorithms. The following classes of discontinuities are identified: figure-ground, space, time, perspective, and topic. It is suggested that rhetorical relations between narrative units are macro labels that stand for frequently occurring clusters of discontinuities. Heuristics for identifying discontinuities are presented and illustrated in an extended example.
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