Discourse-level Analysis Task

A Discourse-level Analysis Task is a Linguistic Analysis Task of a Discourse that looks at Text Meaning beyond the individual Sentences.

• AKA: Extrasentential Semantic Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Discourse Analysis Task, Discourse-level Analysis.
• Context:
  • Input: a Linguistic Artifact.
  • output: Discourse Structure.
  • The entire Text (Discourse) gives additional meaning to its Constituent parts (e.g. Words and Sentences).
  • It can be solved by a Discourse-level Analysis Algorithm.
  • It can require the identification of Discourse Structure.
  • It can be supported by a Discourse Analysis Theory.
  • It can range from being a Single-Document Discourse Analysis Task to being a Corpus-based Discourse Analysis Task.
  • It can be:
    • a Linguistic Expression Entailment Task.
    • a Coreference Resolution Task.
    • a Topic Modeling Task.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • In the sentence "David was too far away to see." the Sentence Subject is not specified. The subject could be anyone, or it could be a specific person. The decision requires insight into the other Sentences in the Text. E.g. "X scanned the horizon in vain. Y was too distant to see."
  • TET("My cat is black”, “I have a black cat”) ⇒ True.
  • Coreference Resolution Task.
  • Topic Modeling Task.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Sentence-level Analysis Task, such as a Syntactic Parsing Task.
  • Word-level Analysis Task,
• See: Centering Theory, Semantic Parsing, Mention Reference Resolution Task.

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References

2015

• (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics#Structures Retrieved:2015-4-16.
  • Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)

2010

• http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-20475196.html
  • Discourse analysis involves determining how larger intersentential context influences the interpretation of a sentence.

2008

• (Schiffrin et al., 2008) ⇒ Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, eds. (2008). “The Handbook of Discourse Analysis." John Wiley & Sons.

2007

• (Joshi, 2007) ⇒ Aravind K. Joshi. (2007). “Complexity of Dependencies in Natural Language." Presentation given at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Feb 22.

1997

• (Marcu, 1997) ⇒ Daniel Marcu. (1997). “Rhetorical Parsing, Summarization, and Generation of Natural Language Texts.] PhD Thesis. University of Toronto.

1995

• (Grosz et al, 1995) ⇒ Barbara J. Grosz, Scott Weinstein, and Aravind K. Joshi. (1995). “Centering: A Framework for Modeling the Local Coherence of Discourse.” In: Computational Linguistics, 21(2).

1978

• (Grosz, 1978) ⇒ Barbara J. Grosz. (1978). “Discourse Analysis.” In: Donald E. Walker, and Barbara J. Grosz, editors. "Understanding Spoken Language.” Elsevier Science ISBN:0444002871

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