Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries

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Jonathan Robie
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Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries

Post by Jonathan Robie »

A question for you discourse experts from a query language guy.

I am interested in exploring the extent to which discourse boundaries can be identified using syntactic rules, implementing a clear set of syntactic rules using a query language and a treebank. I'm fine with using a set of rules that is specific to a work (e.g., Mark's discourse boundaries may not be the same as John's).

A few clear examples is sufficient, I'm looking for rules that are likely to have few false positives, or at least a good explanation for an underlying meaning that explains both the use in the discourse boundary and other uses.

Where can I find a good set of candidate rules to play with?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Maybe Levinsohn's Discourse Features has something. My sense is that it is not so much a set of simple if-then rules but a set of weighted factors that is likely to be useful, sort of like training a neural net.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Maybe Levinsohn's Discourse Features has something. My sense is that it is not so much a set of simple if-then rules but a set of weighted factors that is likely to be useful, sort of like training a neural net.
OK, I was looking for a simple, cute example for a demo I will be doing in November at SBL. Sounds like this would be better as a longer term project ...
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
D Ryan Lowe
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Joined: June 25th, 2012, 1:45 am

Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries

Post by D Ryan Lowe »

Jonathan Robie wrote:A question for you discourse experts from a query language guy.

I am interested in exploring the extent to which discourse boundaries can be identified using syntactic rules, implementing a clear set of syntactic rules using a query language and a treebank. I'm fine with using a set of rules that is specific to a work (e.g., Mark's discourse boundaries may not be the same as John's).

A few clear examples is sufficient, I'm looking for rules that are likely to have few false positives, or at least a good explanation for an underlying meaning that explains both the use in the discourse boundary and other uses.

Where can I find a good set of candidate rules to play with?
I'm wondering what sort of discourse boundaries you're looking for. Breaking up sentences, or separating subordinate clauses?

If you want to run it on something simple, you could try making discourse boundaries separating large sections of Scripture based on καί and/or δέ.
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