Discourse Annotation in the PDTB: The Next Generation

What it is about

The paper presents what PDTB-3 adds to PDTB-2: about 13,000 new relations (≈40K → ≈53K), mostly inside sentences. Newly annotated contexts: free adjuncts (≈2,200; «Treasuries opened lower, reacting to …» = reason), free to-infinitives (≈1,500; purpose or condition), clauses introduced by prepositions (≈1,600; with, by, for, in, instead of), conjoined verb phrases (≈5,800), and extra implicit senses on top of an explicit and/but (≈1,800; «She became an abortionist accidentally, and continued because …» = Conjunction plus implicit Precedence; such extra senses hold for 32% of sentence conjunctions). The sense hierarchy is simplified (level 3 now only encodes direction: arg1-as-condition vs arg2-as-condition, arg1/arg2-as-denier, arg1/arg2-as-detail) and extended with Purpose, Manner, Negative condition (unless, or face), Negative result, Similarity. Pragmatic senses become features: +belief (the argument is an inferred belief) and +speech-act. A new relation type, Hypophora, links a question to the text that answers it («If not now, when? When the fruit is ripe …»).

Ideas

• I1. Extend Mova's link table (set_cause/set_next in prag/src/frames.rs, chapter 36 §11.1) with the PDTB-3 intra-sentential contexts that tales are full of: a free participial adjunct without a subordinator («feeling very hungry, he called out») → cause when its verb is a state or feeling, next when it is an action before the main one; for V-ing after verbs of punishing/thanking/blaming → cause; instead of V-ing → a substitution (the other frame negated); with + absolute clause → cause. Each rule gets a PRAG_OFF switch and is measured on frame bench cause/next F1 and the course why questions.
• I2. Allow two relations on one and: keep next and add cause when the second conjunct is a typical consequence of the first (fell and broke his leg, ate the poison and died). Start with a closed list of result verbs (die, break, fall, cry, run away) after a change-of-state first verb; the paper's 32% shows how often and carries more than conjunction. Measure on why questions whose answer is the first conjunct.
• I3. Link conditions to their consequences, which §11.6 lists as missing: if/when-clause → cond link to the main frame; unless and imperative + or («Pay me, or I will eat you») → a negative condition (the consequent happens if the condition does not). Then «What will happen if the kid does not hide?» can be answered. Measure on course questions with if.
• I4. Add Hypophora to the QUD stack: a question asked by the narrator or a character and answered in the next sentence(s) pairs the two frames; world/src/qud.rs should accept the answer even without a shared lemma when it directly follows (the because-fragment failure in chapter 36 example 7 is this case). Measure the share of questions popped in world qud runs on lessons.

For Mova

36. Discourse relations and coherence §4 (the PDTB), §11.1 (links between frames), §11.5–11.6 (QUD, not yet). Code: prag/src/frames.rs (set_cause, set_next, cond), prag/src/infer.rs (maxims), world/src/qud.rs. Measures: frame bench cause/next F1, course questions on why / what if / what next. PDTB-3 is LDC — never a source of lexicons or training data.

Topics: Discourse analysis

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{prasad2018discourse,
  title = {{Discourse Annotation in the PDTB: The Next Generation}},
  author = {Prasad, Rashmi and Webber, Bonnie and Lee, Alan},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th Joint ACL-ISO Workshop on Interoperable Semantic Annotation},
  year = {2018},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/W18-4710/}
}

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