The Textual Development of Non-Stereotypic Concepts

THE TEXTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF NON-STEREOTYPIC CONCEPTS Karin Haenelt and Michael K6nyves--T6th Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute (IPSI) GMD Dolivostral]e 15, D 6100 Darmstadt, Germany haenelt@ipsi.darmstadt.gmd.dbp.de koenyves@ipsi.darmstadt.gmd.dbp.de tel. ++49/(0)6151/875-811, fax -818 ABSTRACT In this paper the text theoretical foundation of our text analysis system KONTEXT is described. The basic premise of the KONTEXT model is that new concepts are communicated by using the mechanisms of text constitution. The text model used assumes that the information conveyed in a text and the information describing its contextual organization can be structured into five layers (sentence structure, information on thematic pro- gression, referential structure, conceptual repre- sentation of the text and conceptual background knowledge). The text analysis component con- structs and traverses the information of these lay- ers under control of the discourse development. In this way, it can incrementally construct a textual view on knowledge, rather than only recognizing precoded concepts. 1 INTRODUCTION In the field ofknowledge-bMed text analysis it has been regarded as insufficient to analyze a text against the background of static and stereotypic default assumptions for some time (cf. [Hell- wig84], [Scha/Bruce/Polanyi87]). By applying this method the pre--coded concepts are invoked again and again during the process of text analysis, regardless of the changes land the new concepts being constituted by the ongoing text. The func- tion of a text, however, is not confined to concept selection as in current knowledge-based applica- tions. In addition, textual mechanisms are used to operate on concepts and to compose them to actual contexts, i.e. to constitute (new) concepts. Textu- ally the contexts are established by the thematic and by the referential structure. Thus, new mecha- nisms are required which permit the textual orga- nization to control the creation and manipulation of concepts in text processing. In a way, this is to tie linguistic and knowledge,-based approaches to text processing together into a single method. 2 THE KONTEXT MODEL The basic premise of the KONTEXT model is that the relationship of expression and concept are changed during a text and concepts are communi- cated by using the mechanisms of text constitu- tion. The KONTEXT model is based on the as- sumption that • the information conveyed in a text and the information describing its contextual orga- nization can be structured into five layers. They define the sentence structure, informa- tion on thematic progression, the referential structure, the conceptual representation of the text and the conceptual background knowledge; • discourse provides the basic mechanisms by which concepts are constructed. Discourse is defined as sequences of transitions be- tween discourse states and discourse states are defined by the information represented in the layers. The text analysis component constructs and traverses the information of these layers under control of the discourse development. In this way, it can incrementally construct a textual view on knowledge, rather than only recognizing pre- coded concepts. We will now describe the layers of the text repre- - 263 - sentation. In the following section we discuss the conception of discourse in …

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