[Xmca-l] Fwd: [Rstlist] RST versus issue trees?

[Edward Wall]

David

     You have, perhaps, thought about this far more than I.  Any comments.

Ed


> Begin forwarded messagexc
> 
> From: David Wojick <dwojick@craigellachie.us>
> Subject: [Rstlist] RST versus issue trees?
> Date: April 12, 2017 at 11:46:09 AM CDT
> To: rstlist@listserv.linguistlist.org
> 
> 
> My interest in the RST list is that I have developed a method that does something like RST, but is different, so I want to discuss it with the RST group. It is called the issue tree.
> See https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/07/10/the-issue-tree-structure-of-expressed-thought/
> 
> My impression is that RST (about which I know little) is based on a relatively small constructed taxonomy of relations between "spans" of text. See http://www.sfu.ca/rst/01intro/intro.html for a listing of these relations.
> 
> Issue tree theory has no such taxonomy. It is based on the following fundamental observation:
> 
> With certain important exceptions, every sentence in a text (except the first) is answering a specific question posed to a specific prior sentence.
> 
> Thus the set of relations between sentences is the set of all possible questions. The tree structure occurs because more than one question can be asked of a given sentence and this frequently occurs. The questions are often quite simple, such as how?, why?, such as?, what evidence?, etc.
> 
> For example consider this string of sentences: We have to go. The cops are coming. Use the back door.
> 
> The second sentence is answering the question why? of the first, while the third sentence is answering the question how? of the first. This is a simple issue tree.
> 
> Note that these are reasoning relations, not rhetorical relations.
> 
> When there are many sentences, as in a journal article, the issue tree can be difficult to grasp just by reading the string of sentences. Here the issue tree diagram becomes useful. One can see the reasoning. One can also measure it in various useful ways.
> 
> Also the RST analysis looks to be applicable only to individual documents, while any set of documents on a given topic will have a unique combined issue tree structure. Moreover, the issue tree can be scaled to show just the reasoning relations between documents rather than sentences. Let's say we have 400 recent journal articles on a given topic, which is a fairly typical number. An issue tree diagram of a few thousand nodes could show the collective reasoning that ties this corpus together. The state of the reasoning, as it were. The technology is pretty powerful.
> 
> I welcome your thoughts.
> 
> David
> 
> David Wojick, Ph.D.
> https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/author/dwojick/
> 
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