Constructing a Lexicon of English Discourse Connectives

What it is about

DiMLex-Eng is a lexicon of 149 English discourse connectives in the XML format of the German DiMLex. Entries were collected from the 100 connectives annotated in PDTB 2.0, the signals of the RST Signalling Corpus (where only about 18% of relations carry a connective or marker), and a list of 230 relational n-grams mined from RST-DT, filtered by a definition: not inflectable, meaning is a two-place relation, both arguments are abstract objects (usually clauses), the expression is fixed (not «for this excellent reason») and not compositional (even though is in; especially when or and therefore are not). Each entry gives orthographic variants, syntactic category (adverb, subordinator/preposition, coordinator, phrase), whether the word has non-connective uses, and the relations it signals with corpus frequencies (e.g. by contrast: Contrast 27 times, split into juxtaposition and opposition). Adding the RST signals raised coverage of RST-SC connective tokens from 87% to 95%.

Ideas

• I1. Move Mova's connective knowledge out of code into one small data file of its own, in the paper's shape: connective, variants, category (mark, cc, advmod, phrase), «has non-connective uses» (since as time vs reason, as, while, so), and the Mova link(s) it can create (cause, next, cond, quote, none) with the condition that selects each. Today the table lives in prag/src/frames.rs and chapter 36 §11.1. Write it from Mova's own seeds and the chapter, not from PDTB counts; the frame reader reads it, and the chapter table is generated from it so the two cannot drift.
• I2. Apply the paper's two exclusion criteria to Mova's cue lists: fixed-expression and non-compositionality. even though / even if get their own entries; intensified forms (just because, only after) are parsed as the base connective plus a modifier. A test lists every multiword connective and checks the parser treats it as one fixed unit.
• I3. Use the «non-connective use» flag as a gate in the reader: for ambiguous connectives (since, as, while, so) the link is created only when the syntactic test for the connective reading passes (a finite clause follows; so not before an adjective), and the decision prints which test fired. Measure false cause links on the frame bench (precision of the cause role).

For Mova

36. Discourse relations and coherence §6 (English connectives and their syntax), §11.1, §11.6 (connective senses not disambiguated). Code: prag/src/frames.rs (connective table → data file), Subordinating conjunctions — mark, discourse only for interjections, particles, numbering and emoticons — proposal. Measures: frame bench cause/next precision; a unit test over the connective list.

Topics: Discourse analysis

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.18653/v1/w18-5042

@inproceedings{das2018constructing,
  title = {{Constructing a Lexicon of English Discourse Connectives}},
  author = {Das, Debopam and Scheffler, Tatjana and Bourgonje, Peter and Stede, Manfred},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th Annual SIGdial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/w18-5042},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-5042}
}

References

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