Discourse Relations and Discourse Structure

• Discourse relations are the explicit and implied relations between sentences, clauses, and other parts of a discourse that make it possible to interpret it coherently.
  • What kinds of relations are most common between parts of a discourse?
  • What kind of overall structure does discourse display?
  • How can NLP systems detect and exploit these relations and structures?
• Discourse relations are a major part of discourse structure (especially in monologues, like most text).
  • Discourse structure is hierarchical, with discourse relations tying together clauses, sentences and larger units.
  • In dialog, there are additional factors involved in the structure. What are some of them?

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