JOINT

[Gisela Redeker]

Dear Nishadi (and others), 

Unordered lists of comparable items would form a LIST relation. It can be
tricky, however, to determine what constitutes comparability here. If in
doubt, I tend to look for signals that announce a list or enumeration, in
which case we will have a LIST relation (unless it is an ordered SEQUENCE).
If there is no expectation of a list and the non-initial items in the
relation come more like afterthoughts, I choose JOINT.

Here's an example (from wsj0655 in the Wall Street Journal corpus) where I
have used LIST and JOINT:

(1) (a) Mr. Ortega's threat to breach the cease-fire comes as U.S. officials
were acknowledging that the Contras have at times violated it themselves. 
(b) Secretary of State James Baker, who accompanied President Bush to Costa
Rica, told reporters Friday: "I have no reason to deny reports that some
Contras ambushed some Sandinista soldiers." 
(c) Mr. Baker's assistant for inter-American affairs, Bernard Aronson, while
maintaining that the Sandinistas had also broken the cease-fire,
acknowledged: "It's never very clear who starts what." 
(d) He added that the U.S. has cut off aid to some rebel units when it was
determined that those units broke the cease-fire.

I have analyzed the relation (c)-(d) as JOINT (the relation between Baker's
statements is left curiously and maybe significantly obscure) and the
relation (b)--(c-d) as LIST (as (a) mentions "officials" and (b) only names
one of them).

I'd be interested how others apply these relations and what you think of my
choices in this example.

Gisela


-----Original Message-----
From: RST Discussion List [mailto:rstlist at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On
Behalf Of Nishadi H De Silva
Sent: maandag 20 november 2006 15:15
To: RSTLIST at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: [RST-LIST] JOINT

Hello,

I'm writing regarding the JOINT relationship in RST. Does anyone know a
precise definition for this apart from that it is the declared absence of a
relationship? I've seen it being used in a couple of the analyses on the RST
website but wouldn't be too sure where to use it myself. Can it be applied,
for instance, to an unordered list of items? (Assuming that SEQUENCE can
only be applied to an ordered list)

I would be grateful for the information.

Many thanks,

Nishadi

 


--
Nishadi De Silva
Dependable Systems & Software Engineering School of Electronics and Computer
Science University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom