Planning texts by constraint satisfaction

  • Authors:
  • Richard Power

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

  • Venue:
  • COLING '00 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Computational linguistics - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

A method is described by which a rhetorical-structure tree can be realized by a text structure made up of sections, paragraphs, sentences, vertical lists, and other textual patterns, with discourse connectives added (in the correct positions) to mark rhetorical relations. We show that text-structuring can be formulated as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem, so that all solutions respecting constraints on text-structure formation and structural compatibility can be efficiently generated. Of the many solutions generated by this method, some are stylistically preferable to others; we show how further constraints can be applied in order to select the best versions. Finally, we discuss some extensions such as the generation of indented text structures.