A Methodology for Extending Focusing Frameworks

Empirical Methods in Discourse: Interpretation and Generation

Volume

Papers from the 1995 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

We address the problem of how to develop and assess algorithms for tracking local focus and for proposing referents of pronouns. We note that other focusing research has not adequately addressed the processing of complex sentences. We discuss issues involved in processing complex sentences and we review a methodology used by other researchers to develop their focusing frameworks. We identify di~culties with that methodology and dit~iculties with using a corpus analysis to extend focusing frameworks to handle complex sentences. We describe our methodology for extending focusing frameworks to handle complex sentences and we explain how it overcomes the difficulties faced by the other approaches.