Signaling of relations is an open question in rhetorical structure theory. Discourse markers are the unmistakable signals of a relation. However, it may be argued that all relations – and not only those involving discourse markers – are signaled in some way. Based on this assumption, this article focuses on two causal relations, ‘Cause’ and ‘Result’, working on an RST double-annotated corpus in Spanish. The main objectives are to identify different signals of Cause and Result relations and to evaluate the (...) ambiguity resulting from those signals. Results demonstrate that a) almost all Cause and Result relations on the corpus are signaled; b) each signal obtains differentiated annotation agreements; and c) patterns of annotation disagreement are grounded in the nature of the signal and not in the relations’ semantic features. (shrink)

Rhetorical Structure Theory is a theory of text organization that has led to areas of application beyond discourse analysis and text generation, its original goals. In this article, we review the most important applications in several areas: discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. We also provide a list of resources useful for work within the RST framework. The present article is a complement to our review of the theoretical aspects of the theory.

Combining the frameworks of multi-dimensional analysis and rhetorical structure theory, this study examines the linguistic co-occurrence patterns in the discourse of corporate annual reports and interprets their underlying functional dimensions. Our corpus consists of texts of corporate 10K reports from firms listed on New York Stock Exchange. Five functional dimensions are quantitatively extracted and qualitatively interpreted: expression of direct persuasion; expression of impersonal stance; subjective versus objective positioning; integrative expression of stance versus fragmented expression; and expression of reliability. All these (...) dimensions contribute to the communicative function of persuasion. The analysis of the rhetorical structures of excerpts with high concentrations of co-occurring linguistic features on each dimension further indicates the communicative strategy of persuasion. The proposed MD model is then applied to analyze the effect of firm performance on the linguistic variation in CAR discourse. We found that firm performance can significantly affect the linguistic variation in CAR discourse. CAR discourse from firms with good performance is more reliable. The result reveals managements’ use of concealment strategy in impression management. This study has implications for MD analysis, business discourse analysis, language pedagogy and accounting research. (shrink)

A key requirement for the automatic generation of argumentative or explanatory text is to present the constituent propositions in an order that readers will find coherent and natural, to increase the likelihood that they will understand and accept the author’s claims. Natural language generation systems have standardly employed a repertoire of coherence relations such as those defined by Mann and Thompson’s Rhetorical Structure Theory. This paper models the generation of persuasive monologue as the outcome of an “inner dialogue”, where the (...) author attempts to anticipate potential challenges or clarification requests. It is argued that certain RST relations such as Motivate, Evidence and Concession can be seen to emerge from various pre-empting strategies. (shrink)

This paper compares the features and methods of the two leading implemented systems that offer a tool for helping a user to find or invent arguments to support or attack a designated conclusion, the Carneades Argumentation System and the IBM Watson Debater tool. The central aim is to contribute to the understanding of scholars in informal logic, rhetoric and argumentation on how these two software systems can be useful for them. One contribution of the paper is to explain to these (...) potential users how the two tools are applicable to the task of inventing arguments by using some simple illustrative examples. Another is to redefine the structure of argument invention as a procedure. (shrink)

In this article, we first present the platform and the Dislog language, designed for discourse analysis with a logic and linguistic perspective. The platform has now reached a certain level of maturity which allows the recognition of a large diversity of discourse structures including general-purpose rhetorical structures as well as domain-specific discourse structures. The Dislog language is based on linguistic considerations and includes knowledge access and inference capabilities. Functionalities of the language are presented together with a method for writing discourse (...) analysis rules. Efficiency and portability of the system over domains and languages are investigated to conclude this first part. In a second part, we analyse the different types of arguments found in several document genres, most notably: procedures, didactic texts and requirements. Arguments form a large class of discourse relations. A generic and frequently encountered form emerges from our analysis: ?reasons for conclusion? which constitutes a homogeneous family of arguments from a language, functional and conceptual point of view. This family can be viewed as a kind of proto-argument. We then elaborate its linguistic structure and show how it is implemented in . We then investigate the cooperation between explanation and arguments, in particular in didactic texts where they are particularly rich and elaborated. This article ends with a prospective section that develops current and potential uses of this work and how it can be extended to the recognition of other forms of arguments. (shrink)

We present a corpus-based study of coherence in multimodal documents. We concern ourselves with the types of relationships between graphs and tables and the text of the document in which they appear. In order to understand and categorize the types of relations across modalities, we are making use of Rhetorical Structure Theory, and propose that this can adequately describe these types of relations. We analyzed a corpus comprising three different genres, and consisting of about 1500 pages of material and almost (...) 600 figures, tables and graphs. We show that figures stand in both presentational and subject matter relations to the text, and that the relationship between figures and text is one of a small set out of the larger possible rhetorical relations. We also discuss several issues that arise in the treatment of multimodal material, such as the potential for multiple connections between figure and text. (shrink)

In accordance with the compositionality criterion and hierarchy principle of Rhetorical Structure Theory, this study reframes each tree in the RST Discourse Treebank into three new dependency trees with ultimate nodes being clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, respectively, which also draw on an analogy between syntactic and discourse trees. Detailed percentages of various RST relations at the three granularity levels are examined, illuminating the discourse processes of organizing units of one granularity level into those of the next upper level and suggesting (...) certain homogeneity and interaction across levels in the Treebank, particularly at the two upper levels. The study demonstrates the applicability of RST analysis between same-level terminal units. With unique analytical advantages, the newly constructed discourse dependency trees provide new research prospects. (shrink)

The study we report in this article addresses the results of comparing the rhetorical trees from two different languages carried out by two annotators starting from the Rhetorical Structure Theory. Furthermore, we investigate the methodology for a suitable evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative, of these trees. Our corpus contains abstracts of medical research articles written both in Spanish and Basque, and extracted from Gaceta Médica de Bilbao. The results demonstrate that almost half of the annotator disagreement is due to the (...) use of translation strategies that notably affect rhetorical structures. (shrink)