Capturing high‐level structure of naturally occurring, extended explanations using bottom‐up strategies

This paper notes some structural features of naturally occurring, extended explanations and argues that current generation methodologies are inadequate for determining high‐level structure. We then present a computational model for generating high‐level structure, which is based on the hypothesis that high‐level structure is distinct from text structure at lower levels and is determined by the material to be conveyed rather than by independent, recursive text structuring devices. We propose that high‐level structure can be determined by bottom‐up processes that attempt to satisfy speaker, listener, and compositional goals, after which top‐down strategies can be used to organize the material about the selected framework.