<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Paper uid="P98-2155">
  <Title>Constituent-based Accent Prediction</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="939" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Accent and attention
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Much theoretical work on intonational meaning has focused on the association of accent with NEW information, and lack of accent with GIVEN information, where given and new are defined with respect to whether or not the information is already represented in a discourse model. While this association reflects a general tendency (Brown, 1983), empirical studies on longer discourses have shown this simple dichotomy cannot explain important sub-classes of expressions, such as accented pronouns, cf. (Terken, 1984; Hirschberg, 1993).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> We propose a new theory of the relationship between accent and attention, based on an enriched taxonomy of given/new information status provided by both the LOCAL (centering) and GLOBAL (focus stack model) attentional state models in Grosz and Sidner's discourse modeling theory (1986).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  Analysis of a 20-minute spontaneous story-telling monologue t identified separate but interacting contributions of grammatical function, form of referring expression and accentuation 2 in conveying the attentional status of a discourse referent. These interactions can be formally expressed in the framework of attentional modeling by the following principles of interpretation: * The LEXICAL FORM OF A REFERRING EXPRESSION indicates the level of attentional processing, i.e., pronouns involve local focusing while full lexical forms involve global focusing (Grosz et al., 1995).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> * The GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION of a referring expression reflects the local attentional status of the referent, i.e., subject position generally holds the highest ranking member of the forward-looking centers list (Cf list), while direct object holds the next highest ranking member of the Cf list (Grosz et al., 1995; Kameyama, 1985).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> * The ACCENTING of a referring expression serves as an inference cue to shift attention to a new backward-looking center (Cb), or to mark the global (re)introduction of a referent; LACK OF AC-CENT serves as an inference cue to maintain attentional focus on the Cb, Cf list members or global referents (Nakatani, 1997).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The third principle concerning accent interpretation defines for the first time how accent serves uniformly to shift attention and lack of accent serves to maintain attention, at either the local or global level of discourse structure. This principle describing the discourse focusing functions of accent directly explains 86.5% (173/200) of the referring expressions in the spontaneous narrative, as shown in Table 1. If performance factors (e.g. repairs, interruptions) and special discourse situations (e.g. direct quotations) are also considered accounted for, then coverage increases to 96.5% (193/200).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>