Robust discourse parsing via discoure markers, topicality and positions

摘要

This paper describes a simple discourse parsing and analysis algorithm that combines a formal underspecification utilising discourse grammar with Information Retrieval (IR) techniques. first, linguistic knowledge based on discourse markers is used to constrain a totally under- specified discourse representation. Then the remaining underspecification is further specified by the computation of a topicality score for every discourse unit. This computation is done via the vector space model. Finally, the sentences in a prominent position (e.g. the first sentence of a paragraph) are given an adjusted topicality score.