Planning Argumentative Texts

r O,, Plmming Argumcnl; l;iv0 l- ,xts Xiaorong Hua.ng Fachbereich Inforlnatik, Uniw:rsiti[t, des S+ul,rlandes 6(i0d]. Saarbriicken, (l(~rlltTi,liy, etnail: huang~3cs.uni-sb.de Abstract This paper presents PI£OVF, I¢,I"f a text planner for argumentative texts. I~I~OVI']]~II~ Inain feature is that it combines global hierarchical planning and llti- phmned organization of text with respect to local de- rivation relations in a complementary way. The former splits the task of presenting a particular pronf into subtasks of llresenting sul)proot~. "['lie lati, er silnli[al;cs ]iow the next intermediate eonchision to Im l)resenl,ed is chosell under the guida.nce o[ the local ['ocils. 1. Introduction This pallor presents a, text planner for l,h,' w,rlmliz~t- tion of natural deduction (ND) st, yle proofs [Gm,:Uq. Several similar attempi;s can be lbulld in previous work. I)eveloped before the era of NL genl!ral.))li, the system EXPOUND of D. (Thesl.er [Che76] call I>e characterized as an exatnl+le of direct translatio'a: Al- though a sophisticated linearizatioii is applied on the input ND proofs, the steps are then I:ranslated loc- ally in a template driven way. ND i>rool:s were tested as input to an early version of the MUMI~,I,I'; sys- tern of D. McDonald [McD83], the Irllain aim however, was to show the fl~asibility of the architecture. A more receitt attempt can be foilnd in 'l'lI[Nl(li;ll. [1']P93], whMI implements sew~ral interesting but isol- ated proof presentation strategies, witliout giving ;l comprehensive underlying model. Our computational model can therelbre I>e viewed ;is the first serious attempt at a comprehensive conipu- tational model that produces adeqilate argillneill, al,iw~ te×l,s froln N]) si,yle proofs. The inaill nilll is I,+) sh+:,v how existing text planning techlliques Call [)t~ adapted for this particular apl)iication, q'o test its feasibility, this computational model is imldelilenl,ed lit a sysl,enl called PROVERH. Most current NL text pialillers assiiltle thai, [ali- guage generation is planned I>eh~vior ~tlid there- fore adopt a hiera.rchical platiliilig aplll'oach [Iiov88, Moo89, Da192, Rei91]. Nonetheless there! is psycllolo- gical ,~vidence that language has an ullplaluled, si~oti-. taneous aspect ms well [Och79]. Based on this ol~sei'va- l, ion, researchers have exploited organizing text with respect to some local relations. Sibun [Sib90] itnl+> merited a system generating descripticms for oltiects with a strong domain sl.ructure, such as houses, chips alld families. Once a discourse is st.;i,l'l,~;(I, local strllc- lures suggest the next objects awtilalfle. [nstead of planning globally, short-range sl;rategies ~tre cnlpl~tyed to ol'gallize ~t short seglrl<!lll, or' text. l?roni a collll)ltl, a- ti~mnl point of view, a hierarchical planner elaborates recursively on the initial commmiicatiw~ goal mitil the Ihtal sultgoals can be achieved by ++l>plyivg a prlmitiw'~ operator. A text generator based on the local organ- ization, in contrast, repeatedly chooses a part of the renmiNing t.ask and carries it out. The macroplanner of ]'IgOVER.B combines hier- arcDical planTdng with local orgaMzation in a uniform planning framework. 'the hierarchical planning is real- ized by so-called top-dowu presentation operators that split the task of presenting a particular proof into subtasks of presenting subproofs. While the over- all planning mechanism follows the RS'l.'-lmsed plan- ning …

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