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Integrating text formatting and text generation

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Trends in Natural Language Generation An Artificial Intelligence Perspective (EWNLG 1993)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1036))

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Abstract

This paper presents a model for representing the architecture of documents for natural language generation. Document architecture is an abstract notion, perceptible through the formatting treatments applied to structural elements in a text: titles, organization of the text into chapters or sections, paragraphs, formulations such as theorems, definitions, introductions, etc. It can be seen as the visual structure of a text. The model of document architecture representation is constructed from a specialized sublanguage (in the sense of Z. Harris) of natural language. The sublanguage, a metalanguage for text architecture, is tailored to text production. We extracted about thirty classes of metasentences of this metalanguage, covering nearly the full scope of text architectural phenomena that appear in scientific and technical documents. A specific text is represented by a metadiscourse which is a list of instantiated metasentences, observing properties that ensure the coherence of the metadiscourse. This model has multiple applications: it can be used by systems of text manipulation and transformation through architecture (analysis, generation, formatting, editing, etc.). In the last part of this paper, we propose a brief survey of a system of formatted text generation, based on this model.

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Giovanni Adorni Michael Zock

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pascual, E. (1996). Integrating text formatting and text generation. In: Adorni, G., Zock, M. (eds) Trends in Natural Language Generation An Artificial Intelligence Perspective. EWNLG 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1036. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60800-1_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60800-1_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60800-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49457-7

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