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<Paper uid="C90-3018">
  <Title>GENERATING CONNECTIVES</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1. INTROI)UCTION: MOTIVATION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> A language %~:.eration system that produces complex sentences must be able to determine which connective (e.g., &amp;quot;but,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;although/' &amp;quot;since,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;because,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;and,&amp;quot; etc.) best links its embedded sentences. Previous text generation systems (McKeown, 1985, Mann, 1984, Davey, 1979, Hovy, 1987) 1 have generally used a notion similar to rhetorical relations to describe the connection between propositions. They make a one-to-one mapping from these relations to connectives for generation (for example, the relation &amp;quot;opposition&amp;quot; would be realized by the connective &amp;quot;but&amp;quot;). In this approach it is difficult to distinguish between similar comlectives (e.g., because vs. since or but vs. although). These connectives can not be used interchangeably, however, and a generation system must be able to make the correct choice.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In this paper, we describe a model for connective choice which distinguishes between similar connectives.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> It is based on a representation of utterances - called &amp;quot;interpretative fommt&amp;quot; (IF) (Elhadad &amp; McKeown, 1988) - which captures several dimensions of their usage. We present an implemented procedure to select an appropriate connective given IFs for two propositions. We demonstrate how our surface generator uses I\]:s to choose between the four connectives but, although, since and because.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  fion systems that make any attempts at connective generation. Each connective is described as a set of constraints between the features of the propositions it connects.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> This allows for a simple representation of the connective but one that captures a wide variety of different uses. An IF contains four pragmatic features in addition to the propositional content and speech act of the proposition: argumentative orientation (Duerot, 1983), the set of conclusions that the proposition supports; functional status (Sinclair &amp; Coulthard, 1975, Roulet et al, 1985), its structural relationship to the remaining discourse segment; polyphonic features (Ducrot, 1983), indicating whether the speaker attributes the utterance to himself or to others; and a thematization procedure, which describes the connection between discourse entities in the propositions. Connective selection is implemented through constraint satisfaction using a functional unification grammar.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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