Building another bridge over the generation gap

Proceedings of the 30th annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics -, 1992

We are currently engaged in a project to study the generation of instructional texts for common consumer devices. Our initial e orts have focused on an exhaustive corpus-based analysis of instruction booklets for cordless telephones. In this paper, we present our analysis of the way the various processes used in this domain are expressed. Our emphasis here is on the relationship between the surface grammatical coding of these processes and the underlying rhetorical structure of the text. This analysis has been formalized using a systemic-functional framework, with the resulting system networks forming the basis for the imagene text generation system.

2003

We are developing a Natural Language Generation (NLG) system that generates texts tailored for the reading ability of individual readers. As part of building the system, GIRL (Generator for Individual Reading Levels), we carried out an analysis of the RST Discourse Treebank Corpus to find out how human writers linguistically realise discourse relations. The goal of the analysis was (a) to create a model of the choices that need to be made when realising discourse relations, and (b) to understand how these choices were typically made for "normal" readers, for a variety of discourse relations. We present our results for discourse relations: concession, condition, elaboration-additional, evaluation, example, reason and restatement. We discuss the results and how they were used in GIRL.

Discourse, be it written or spoken, consists generally of more than a single sentence. Production of a multisentential discourse requires planning, or a series of choices that guide subsequent verbal production. Discourse planning involves the creation and elaboration of communicative goals, and the application of strategies for the selection and organization of content, taking into account the situation and the available linguistic resources. This chapter will focus on aspects of planning that pertain to producing coherent discourse, and on computational models to perform this planning process. In the introduction we will discuss some of the problems faced by a producer of an extended piece of discourse. The list is not exhaustive, but it captures the most important issues in discourse planning and shows how they are interrelated. In Section 10.3 we will review experimental evidence pertaining to discourse planning. An important part of this discussion will address written rather than spoken discourse. It will be shown that our understanding of the whole process is far from complete. We believe that computational models may help to discover what pieces of the puzzle are lacking and how the different pieces may fit together. Next, in Section 10.4, we will present some of the computational models that have been developed for discourse planning. It should be noted that none of these systems has been developed as a psychological model, hence none of them should be evaluated strictly on that basis. However, it appears that computational work is progressing towards the point where implementation and testing of psychological models of discourse planning will become feasible.

1982

\ rt 1: TWO DISCOURSE GENERATORS Because discourse generation is a relatively new branch of Artificial Intelligence, only a few incomplete discourse generators have been developed. A study of those efforts reveals the nature of the task, what makes it difficult, and how the complexities of discourse generation can be controlled.

1991

This is an important book. On the surface, it is a survey and summary of work related to a major computational linguistics effort--the Penman project at the University of Southern California. Beneath the specific title and the apparently narrow subject matter, however, lies a general point about the field of computational linguistics: many important aspects of language are not addressed by the generative tradition that has dominated the field. This book aims to demonstrate that other types of linguistic description are available to serve as the basis for a computational linguistic treatment of these issues.

Language, 1992

… , Workshop on Intentionality and Structure in …, 1993

The IMAGENE project has studied the expression of actions in the context of instructional text generation. The approach employs a rather traditional interpretation of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (Mann and Thompson, 1989), using it both as a descriptive tool and as a ...

Resumen: Uno de los desafíos de la Generación de Lenguaje Natural es la adaptación de la estructura y las palabras de la salida lingüística a la habilidad del usuario, el contenido, el género apropiado, el estilo, etc. Nos centramos en la determinación de la estructura del discurso. En general, se supone que entre dos unidades de contenido ocurre siempre la misma relación de discurso. Propuestas que varían el tipo de relación discursiva y el orden de las proposiciones según la interpretación del contenido siguen siendo escasas. Sin embargo, tal interpretación es extremadamente importante especialmente si el contenido es altamente dinámico como por ejemplo, cuando los datos son series temporales. Presentamos un planificador de textos que considera las restricciones que imponen los datos dinámicos para tomar decisiones a cada etapa de la planificación, en particular para la selección de las relaciones discursivas y la ordenación de las proposiciones. Palabras clave: generación de textos, contenido dinámico, planificación RST, XSLT, información sobre la calidad del aire Abstract: One of Natural Language Generation's continuing challenges is to determine the structure and words of the generated linguistic output in accordance with the expertise of the user, the content, the appropriate genre, style, etc. We focus on the determination of the discourse structure. Most often, it is assumed that between two content units always the same discourse relation holds. Approaches in which the choice of discourse relations and the ordering of propositions depends on the interpretation of the content are still scarce. However, such an interpretation is extremely important especially if the content is highly dynamic as, e.g., in the case of data parameter time series. We present a text planner that takes into account the constraints imposed by dynamic data to make decisions at every stage of the text planning, and in particular, for the selection of discourse relations and the ordering of propositions.

2006

Este artículo describe el enriquecimiento de la calidad estilística de los textos generados por el sistema PRINCE, una aplicación de generación de lenguaje natural diseñada para construir textos de cuentos fantásticos. Para ello se explota el potencial de un recurso léxico (WordNet) y algoritmos de mapeamiento estructural para enriquecer los textos de salida con figuras retóricas simples como metáfora y analogía. El sistema enriquecido sigue la arquitectura para sistemas multi-agente OAA, con varios agentes cooperando para conseguir los textos finales. Los resultados de la versión enriquecida son presentados y discutidos. Finalmente, se describen algunos problemas y posibles extensiones.

2008

The goal of this workshop series is to provide a forum for presenting recent research on constraints in discourse. The target areas include the recognition of discourse structure as well as the interpretation and generation of discourse in a broad variety of domains. The workshop is open to talks that further our theoretical understanding of the role of constraints in discourse, as well as empirical studies that shed light on their empirical validity. The workshop is explicitly intended for discussion and comparison of theoretical accounts that lay the ground for applications. Berry Claus: Comprehending descriptions of non-factual desired situations: Discourse referents and motor actions 3 Laurence Danlos: D-STAG: Parsing discourse with Synchronous TAG and SDRT background 5 Julia Hirschberg: A question of questions: Prosodic cues to question form and function 7 Paul Piwek: Constraints in natural language generation 9 Regular Papers Maria Averintseva-Klisch, Sebastian Buecking: What&...