Discourse Deixis and Discourse Processing

Computational approaches to discourse understanding have a two-part goal: (1) identifying those aspects of discourse understanding that require process-based accounts, and (2) characterizing the processes and data structures they involve. To date, in the area of reference, process-based accounts have been developed for reference via anaphoric pronouns and via definite descriptors. In this paper, I propose and argue for a processbased account of deictic reference in text. This account adds precision to common notions of discourse entity, discourse segment and focus and to relationships between the three. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-88-75. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/610 DISCOURSE DEIXIS AND DISCOURSE PROCESSING Bonnie Lynn Webber MS-CIS-88-75 LINC LAB 133 Department of Computer and Information Science School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104

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