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<Paper uid="W94-0308">
  <Title>Expressing Procedural Relationships in Multilingual Instructions*</Title>
  <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
Abstract
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    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper we discuss a study of the expression of procedural relations in multilingual user instructions~ in particular the relations of Gene,ution and Enablement.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> These procedural relations are defined in terms of a plan representation model, and applied in a corpus study of English, French, and Portuguese instructions. The results of our analysis indicate specific guidelines for the tactical realisation of expressions of these relations in multilingual instructional text.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Introduction In user instructions, it is common to find expressions  like: (1) Pull down and remove the white plastic tray that  holds the video cable and unpack the cable.(Apple) Here we have what appears to be a simple expression of sequential actions. The reader is expected to pull down the white plastic tray, remove that tray: and then unpack the cable. Current studies of instructional text (e.g.. RSsner and Stede, 1992; Vander Linden, 1993) typically represent the relationship found here in a simple multi-dependent structure such as that provided by the Sequence schenla in Mann and Thompson:s Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (1988) (see figure 1A). This rhetorical structure, which represents three sequential actidns, directly matches the grammatical forms used in the actual text. Indeed: this sequential execution is precisely what the instruction writer desires the reader to &amp;quot;This work is supported by the Commission of the European Union Grant LRE-62009, the Engineering and Physical</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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