Complex connectives in German
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Manfred Stede
Abstract
Identifying the presence of coherence relations automatically is known to be a difcult task for a number of reasons. One of the problems involved has so far received only little attention: Connectives (the primary source of information for relation analysis) can be complex, i.e. consist of several words that possibly are not adjacent, as in the case of “if .. then”. In this paper, we rst offer a classication of complex connectives for German according to their structural properties, which leads us to propose six different groups. Furthermore, we describe how the structural properties can be captured in a formal “discourse marker lexicon”, which is in machine-readable (XML-based) form. Finally, we describe how this lexicon can in turn be employed for the task of automatic local coherence analysis, i.e. the identication of individual relations between adjacent spans of text.
Abstract
Identifying the presence of coherence relations automatically is known to be a difcult task for a number of reasons. One of the problems involved has so far received only little attention: Connectives (the primary source of information for relation analysis) can be complex, i.e. consist of several words that possibly are not adjacent, as in the case of “if .. then”. In this paper, we rst offer a classication of complex connectives for German according to their structural properties, which leads us to propose six different groups. Furthermore, we describe how the structural properties can be captured in a formal “discourse marker lexicon”, which is in machine-readable (XML-based) form. Finally, we describe how this lexicon can in turn be employed for the task of automatic local coherence analysis, i.e. the identication of individual relations between adjacent spans of text.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Processing narrative texts 17
- Through narrative planning towards the preverbal message 45
- Bridges between events 77
- The semantics of French continuative rises in SDRT 109
- Coherence structure and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts 137
- Complex connectives in German 165
- Differential properties of three discourse connectives in Turkish 183
- Appositive relative clauses and their competing allostructures in English 207
- Index 227
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Processing narrative texts 17
- Through narrative planning towards the preverbal message 45
- Bridges between events 77
- The semantics of French continuative rises in SDRT 109
- Coherence structure and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts 137
- Complex connectives in German 165
- Differential properties of three discourse connectives in Turkish 183
- Appositive relative clauses and their competing allostructures in English 207
- Index 227
