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?
Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries
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Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries
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
Melbourne, Australia
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Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries
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 ...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.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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Re: Syntactic queries and discourse boundaries
I'm wondering what sort of discourse boundaries you're looking for. Breaking up sentences, or separating subordinate clauses?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?
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.