ABSTRACT 

An experimental analyzer for Japanese text which extracts "discourse struc-
ture" that expresses rhetorical and logical relation between sentences in the 
text.

We formalized the constraints on the discourse structure detected by rhetor-
ical expressions in the text, and the preference rules to the local structure 
depending on the occurrence of predefined surface expressions such as con-
nectives.

Features 

Description for Discourse Structure 
The 24 "Rhetorical Relations" are defined for discourse structure descrip-
tion. 

Segmentation Rule 
"Segmentation Rules" capture the relations between Japanese surface 
rhetorical expressions and the global constraints on the discourse struc-
ture. 

Thinking-flow Rule 
"Thinking-flow Rules" are preference rules which express local constraints 
on the sequence of rhetorical relations and sub-structures. 





Figure 1: Configuration of the Discourse Structure Analyzer 


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