Approaches to the Planning of Coherent Text

Abstract

This paper discusses the planning of multisententialal text by computer. In order to construct coherent paragraphs, we have been using relations from Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) operationalized as plans. The paper first describes, in some detail, the current method of planning a paragraph using operationalized RST relation/plans. It then makes two points that illustrate why RST relation/plans are the ideal tool for planning paragraphs. First, these relation/plans can be shown to combine the best features of paragraph-sized schemas and clause-sized planning rules under a top- down planning regime in a way which affords much flexibility to the user. Second, RST relation/plans can support both standard top-down planning and open- ended conversation-like behavior; a small difference in treatment gives rise to either paradigm. Keywords: Coherence, Computational linguistics, Discourse, Natural language generation, Natural language processing, Penman, Rhetorical structure theory, Text planning.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 1989
Accession Number
ADA216463

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  • Eduard H. Hovy

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  • University of Southern California

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