A problem with an analysis in terms of RST

[Holger Schauer]

Hi !

Disclaimer: this is not a homework. Instead I am doing research on
discourse structure and use RST to analyse a bunch of texts and 
check what problems one encounters.

I just encountered the following piece of text. It is an excerpt from
a german newspaper article (taz Nr. 5958 of 7.10.1999, page 1)on the
negotiations about compensation by the german government and industry
for forced labourers during WWII.

I present the excerpt already broken down in units (I am not a fan of
the "one clause"-"one unit" fraction):

(1) What else but shame should one feel
(2) in face of the result of six months of negotiations,
(3) which started with a nice gesture
(4) only to end soon in woeful horse trading.

(5) When finally in the next few days at the negotiations in Washington
    the sum of 6,9 billions DM is announced, 
(6) this means: it's sink or swim.
(7) Because, for the former forced labourers every week counts.


(6) is "Vogel, friss oder stirb" in German, which means "bird, eat it
or die".


Okay, now here's the problem: decide to which unit (5-6) relates, and
with which relation. I tend to say (1-4) and "Joint" (or in D. Marcus
terms "Topic Shift"), although one could argue that in (5) the
"result" from (2) is ELABORAT-ed ("finally"). This however would
imply that (5-7) are sub-ordinate to "feeling shame" (1) and I am
not sure about this reading (i.e. I am not sure whether the author
wanted to convey it, my own feelings are not an issue here).

Apart from this, I would say, 1 is related to 2-4 via a CIRCUMSTANCE
relation, so the conditional in (5-6) would also be a part of this
CIRCUMSTANCE which does not look too convining to me.

Any comments anybody ?

 Holger
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