Rhetorical Structure Theory: Description and Construction of Text Structures.

Abstract

Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is a theory of text structure that is being extended to serve as a theoretical basis for computational text planning. Test structure in RST are hierarchic, built on small patterns called schemas. The schemas which compose the structureal hierachy of a text describe the functions of the parts rather than their form characteristics. Relations between text parts, comparable to conjunctive relations, are a prominent part of RST's definitional machinery. Recent work on RST has put it onto a new definitional basis. This paper describes the current status of descriptive RST, along with efforts to create a constructive version for use as a basis for programming a text planner.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1986
Accession Number
ADA173859

Entities

People

  • Sandra A. Thompson
  • William C. Mann

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Artificial Satellites
  • California
  • Classification
  • Complex Systems
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Programming
  • Construction
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Grammars
  • Hierarchies
  • Information Science
  • Judgment
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Natural Languages

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)