Definitions of Conjunction and Disjunction

Fri Sep 15 01:20:09 UTC 2006

Maite,

I don't know how you'll know when a consensus has been reached, but it seems to me that the definitions recovered by Gisela capture disjunction and conjunction in a way that is both useful and consistent with the spirit of RST.

Andy

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Maite Taboada 
  To: RSTLIST at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10:39 AM
  Subject: Re: [RST-LIST] Definitions of Conjunction and Disjunction

  Hi all,

  I had a student this summer doing annotations, and she started using the disjunction and conjunction relations, because they were listed listed in the RST coder. Below are a few examples of the text that she coded with those relations. I'm not sure they all apply, since I haven't gone over them, and she was working without precise definitions (she sort of came up with definitions based on the examples she found). She found many more disjunctions than conjunctions, and most, if not all, of them had only 2 nuclei.

  As for why the relations are not listed on the web site any more, I simply don't know. I transferred whatever was on the original site around mid-2004, and it looks like Bill had removed them by then. I don't know why.

  If there's consensus in the list about definitions, I'd be happy to post them again on the site with examples.

  - Maite

  ---------------------------------------------------------
  Examples:

  Disjunction
  He either had Langdon flashback to a lecture he gave in a class somewhere (yawn)
  or he had two or more characters discuss the issue to death.

  Will Peter ever get out,
  or will he die in the tower?

  She can't get a good night's sleep,
  [disjunction, nucleus1] because either Grandma is snoring
  [disjunction, nucleus2] or somebody is breaking into her house [sat., result] and waking her up.

  either that,
  or he was specifically looking for a movie contract for this story,

  Apparently he just liked the name Betsey
  or kept forgetting he'd already used it.

  Conjunction
  This didn't make me like the story any less
  nor did I find it hard to follow-

  Disney provides great access to transportation
  and every cast member is ready to provide detailed directions and tips for getting to your desired destination quickly.

  ---------------------------------------------------------

  At 19:20 12/09/2006 +0200, Gisela Redeker wrote:

    I have been using the following definitions, which I am pretty sure I got from Bill Mann's page in 2003:

    Relation 

    Constraints on each pair of N 

    Intention of W 

    Conjunction

    The items are conjoined to form a unit in which each item plays a comparable role

    R recognizes that the linked items are conjoined

    Disjunction

    An item presents a (not necessarily exclusive) alternative for the other(s)

    R recognizes that the linked items are alternatives

    What I like about these definitions is their flexibility: I distinguish subject matter and presentational uses (for these and for the multi-nuclear relations of LIST and SEQUENCE). 

    I've only now discovered that the current list of definitions on the RST site no longer includes these -- does anyone know why?

    Best regards,
    Gisela

Gisela Redeker, Professor
Department of Communication and Information Sciences
Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen
P.O.Box 716, NL-9700 AS Groningen
g.redeker at rug.nl tel:
+31-50-3635973 fax: +31-50-3636855
http://www.let.rug.nl/~redeker

    Mick O'Donnell wrote: 

      Hi Chris, Jelisaveta, 

        The original document describing was RST: 

      William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson 1987 "Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization". ISI Technical Report ISI/RS-87-190. 
      (available from: http://www.sfu.ca/rst/05bibliographies/report.html) 

      It mentions disjunction under multinuclear relations (p73). However, 
      from a quick look, I don't think any details are given of this 
      relation. 

      Conjunction is not mentioned. 
      However, there is a Joint relation (p76), which I think is too weak 
      for conjunction: Joint asserts no relation between nuclei, while 
      Conjunction should assert some relation amongst the nuclei. 

      Note however that Bill Mann did add Conjunction 
      to the relation sets for both classical and extended RST. 

      Mick 

      Jelisaveta Safranj wrote: 

        Dear Chris, 

        I have found something in Discourse Tagging Reference Manual written by Lynn Carlson and Daniel Marcu. 

        Disjunction is a multinuclear relation whose elements can be listed as alternatives, either positive or negative. 

        Examples: 
        [Call it a fad.] [Or call it the wave of the future.] 

        In the aerobic phase, for instance, lactic acid and lactate are still produced, [but they are consumed by less active muscles] [or metabolized in the liver] and so do not accumulate. 

        Conjunction is not mentioned at all. 

        Hope it helps 
        Jelisaveta 

        ___________________________________________________________ 
        $0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer 
        10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more. 
        Signup at www.doteasy.com 

  _____
  Maite Taboada
  Assistant Professor
  Department of Linguistics
  Simon Fraser University
  8888 University Dr.
  Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6 
  Canada

  Tel: 604-291-5585  Fax: 604-291-5659
  mtaboada at sfu.ca - http://www.sfu.ca/~mtaboada 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/rstlist/attachments/20060914/da118365/attachment.htm>