@inproceedings{dong-etal-2024-syntactic,
title = "Syntactic Preposing and Discourse Relations",
author = "Dong, Yunfang and
Liao, Xixian and
Webber, Bonnie",
editor = "Graham, Yvette and
Purver, Matthew",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = mar,
year = "2024",
address = "St. Julian{'}s, Malta",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-long.170",
pages = "2790--2802",
abstract = "Over 15 years ago, Ward {\&} Birner (2006) suggested that non-canonical constructions in English can serve both to mark information status and to structure the information flow of discourse. One such construction is preposing, where a phrasal constituent appears to the left of its canonical position, typically sentence-initially. But computational work on discourse has, to date, ignored non-canonical syntax. We take account of non-canonical syntax by providing quantitative evidence relating NP/PP preposing to discourse relations. The evidence comes from an LLM mask-filling task that compares the predictions when a mask is inserted between the arguments of an implicit inter-sentential discourse relation {---} first, when the right-hand argument (Arg2) starts with a preposed constituent, and again, when that constituent is in canonical (post-verbal) position. Results show that (1) the top-ranked mask-fillers in the preposed case agree more often with {``}gold{''} annotations in the Penn Discourse TreeBank than they do in the latter case, and (2) preposing in Arg2 can affect the distribution of discourse-relational senses.",
}
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="dong-etal-2024-syntactic">
<titleInfo>
<title>Syntactic Preposing and Discourse Relations</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yunfang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dong</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xixian</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Bonnie</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Webber</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2024-03</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yvette</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Graham</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Matthew</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Purver</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">St. Julian’s, Malta</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Over 15 years ago, Ward & Birner (2006) suggested that non-canonical constructions in English can serve both to mark information status and to structure the information flow of discourse. One such construction is preposing, where a phrasal constituent appears to the left of its canonical position, typically sentence-initially. But computational work on discourse has, to date, ignored non-canonical syntax. We take account of non-canonical syntax by providing quantitative evidence relating NP/PP preposing to discourse relations. The evidence comes from an LLM mask-filling task that compares the predictions when a mask is inserted between the arguments of an implicit inter-sentential discourse relation — first, when the right-hand argument (Arg2) starts with a preposed constituent, and again, when that constituent is in canonical (post-verbal) position. Results show that (1) the top-ranked mask-fillers in the preposed case agree more often with “gold” annotations in the Penn Discourse TreeBank than they do in the latter case, and (2) preposing in Arg2 can affect the distribution of discourse-relational senses.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">dong-etal-2024-syntactic</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-long.170</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2024-03</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>2790</start>
<end>2802</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Syntactic Preposing and Discourse Relations
%A Dong, Yunfang
%A Liao, Xixian
%A Webber, Bonnie
%Y Graham, Yvette
%Y Purver, Matthew
%S Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2024
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C St. Julian’s, Malta
%F dong-etal-2024-syntactic
%X Over 15 years ago, Ward & Birner (2006) suggested that non-canonical constructions in English can serve both to mark information status and to structure the information flow of discourse. One such construction is preposing, where a phrasal constituent appears to the left of its canonical position, typically sentence-initially. But computational work on discourse has, to date, ignored non-canonical syntax. We take account of non-canonical syntax by providing quantitative evidence relating NP/PP preposing to discourse relations. The evidence comes from an LLM mask-filling task that compares the predictions when a mask is inserted between the arguments of an implicit inter-sentential discourse relation — first, when the right-hand argument (Arg2) starts with a preposed constituent, and again, when that constituent is in canonical (post-verbal) position. Results show that (1) the top-ranked mask-fillers in the preposed case agree more often with “gold” annotations in the Penn Discourse TreeBank than they do in the latter case, and (2) preposing in Arg2 can affect the distribution of discourse-relational senses.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-long.170
%P 2790-2802
Markdown (Informal)
[Syntactic Preposing and Discourse Relations](https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-long.170) (Dong et al., EACL 2024)
ACL
- Yunfang Dong, Xixian Liao, and Bonnie Webber. 2024. Syntactic Preposing and Discourse Relations. In Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 2790–2802, St. Julian’s, Malta. Association for Computational Linguistics.