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<Paper uid="W05-0312">
  <Title>Annotating Discourse Connectives in the Chinese Treebank [?]</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="84" end_page="88" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Overview of Chinese Discourse
Connectives
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> With our theoretical disposition, a discourse connective is viewed as a predicate taking two abstract objects such as propositions, events, or situations as its arguments. A discourse connective can be either explicit or implicit. An explicit discourse connective is realized in the form of one lexical item or several lexical items while an implicit discourse connective must be inferred between adjacent discourse units. Typical explicit discourse connectives are subordinate and coordinate conjunctions as well as discourse adverbials. While the arguments for subordinate and coordinate conjunctions are generally local, the first argument for a discourse adverbial may need to be identified long-distance in the previous discourse.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="84" end_page="85" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.1 Subordinate conjunctions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> There are two types of subordinate conjunctions in Chinese, single and paired. With single subordinate conjunctions, the subordinate conjunction introduces the subordinate clause, as in (1). By convention, the subordinate clause is labeled ARG1 and the main clause is labeled ARG2. The subordinate conjunction is NOT included as part of the argument. The subordinate clause generally precedes the main clause in Chinese, but occasionally it can also follow the main clause. The assignment of the argument labels to the discourse units is independent of their syntactic distributions. The subordinate clause is always labeled ARG1 whether it precedes or follows the main clause.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Simple subordinate conjunctions: Simple subordinate conjunctions are very much like English where the subordinate clause is introduced by a sub- null policies are effective, Asian economy is expected to recover in 1999.&amp;quot; Paired subordinate conjunctions: Chinese also abounds in paired subordinate conjunctions, where the subordinate conjunction introduces the subordinate clause and another discourse connective introduces the main clause, as in (2). In this case, the discourse connectives are considered to be paired and jointly anchor ONE discourse relation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2">  &amp;quot;If the reform measures are not effective, confidence crisis still exists, then investors is likely to turn their attention to other emerging markets.&amp;quot;  Modified discourse connectives: Like English, some subordinate conjunctions can be modified by an adverb, as illustrated in (3). Note that the subordinate conjunction is in clause-medial position. When this happens, the first argument, ARG1 in this case, becomes discontinuous. Both portions of the argument, the one that comes before the subordinate conjunction and the one after, are considered to be part of the same argument.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> &amp;quot;It is because its operations are standardized that the first purchase service center for medical institutions in China opened in the new district of Pudong in the beginning of last year has not found a single case of kickback after it has traded 100 million yuan worth of medicine in its operation till now.&amp;quot; Conjoined discourse connectives: The subordinate conjunctions can be conjoined in Chinese so that there are two subordinate clauses each having one instance of the same subordinate conjunction.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> In this case, there is still one discourse relation, but ARG1 is the conjunction of the two subordinate clauses. This is in contrast with English, where only one subordinate conjunction is possible and ARG1 is linked with a coordinate conjunction, as illustrated in the English translation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6">  &amp;quot;Although Huang Chunming has not published a novel series for over ten years, and it spans over thirty seven years from 'City Boys Missed Bus' to 'Ticket Box', surprisingly some things in Huang Chunming's literary themes have never changed.&amp;quot;</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="85" end_page="85" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.2 Coordinate conjunctions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The second type of explicit discourse connectives we annotate are coordinate discourse conjunctions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> The arguments of coordinate conjunctions are annotated in the order in which they appear. The argument that appears first is labeled ARG1 and the argument that appears next is marked ARG2. The co-ordinate conjunctions themselves, like subordinate conjunctions, are excluded from the arguments.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2">  &amp;quot;In recent years, the medical expenses for diabetes patients in the U.S. is about 10 billion dollars. Last year the medical expenses for diabetes patients in India is six hundred and ten million dollars. China does not have concrete statistics yet, but its diabetes population is increasing at a pace of 750,000 new patients per year.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Paired coordinate conjunctions: Like subordinate conjunctions, coordinate conjunctions can also be paired, as in (6):  &amp;quot;The difficulty of being modern parents lies in the fact they can not get rid of the traditional values flowing in their blood, and they also need to face new values.&amp;quot;</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="85" end_page="86" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.3 Adverbial connectives
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The third type of explicit discourse connectives we annotate are discourse adverbials. A discourse adverbial differs from other adverbs in that they require an antecedent that is a proposition or a set of related propositions. Generally, the second argument is adjacent to the discourse adverbial while the first argument may be long-distance. By convention, the second argument that is adjacent to the discourse connective is labeled ARG2 and the other argument is  marked as ARG1. Note that in (7b) that first argument is not adjacent to the discourse adverbial.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  Chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says that since the Clinton Administration has already indicated that it will renew China's MFN status, the focus of the lobby this time is on those relatively conserva- null &amp;quot;In the foreign enterprises that China approved of, industry projects accounts for seventy percent of them. Among them processing projects are excessively high. This is consistent with the current state of affairs in China where the training and cost of the labor force is low. Therefore they absorbed a large portion of the labor force.&amp;quot;</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="86" end_page="88" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.4 Implicit discourse connectives
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> In addition to the explicit discourse connectives, there are also implicit discourse connectives that must be inferred from adjacent propositions. The arguments for implicit discourse connectives are marked in the order in which they occur, with the argument that occurs first marked as ARG1 and the other argument marked as ARG2. By convention a punctuation mark is reserved as the place-holder for the discourse connective. Where possible, the annotator is asked to provide an explicit discourse connective to characterize the type of discourse relation. In (8), for example, a coordinate conjunction cjkB6F8&amp;quot;while&amp;quot; can be used in the place of the implicit discourse connective.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  &amp;quot;Among them, export is 17.83 billion, an 1.3 percent increase over the same period last year. Meanwhile, import is 18.27 billion, which is a 34.1 percent increase.&amp;quot; 3 Where are the discourse connectives? In Chinese, discourse connectives are generally clause-initial or clause-medial, although localizers are clause-final and can be used as discourse connective by themselves or together with a preposition. Subordinate conjunctions, coordinate conjunctions and discourse adverbial can all occur in clause-initial as well as clause-medial positions. The distribution of the discourse connectives is not uniform, and varies from discourse connective to discourse connective. Some discourse connectives alternate between clause-initial and clause-medial positions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The examples in (9) show that cjkBEA1cjkB9DC&amp;quot;even though&amp;quot;, which forms a paired connective with cjkB5ABcjkCAC7&amp;quot;but&amp;quot;, occurs in both clause-initial (9a) and clause-medial  (9b) positions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> (9) a. [conn cjkBEA1cjkB9DC  &amp;quot;Even though the financial turmoil in some Asian countries will affect the economic growth of these countries, as far as the economy of the whole world is concerned, the strong economic growth of other countries will make up for this loss.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Looking ahead at the Year of Tiger, even though China's economic train will have its ups and downs, as long as the adjusting measures are timely and proper, we believe that it will advance steadily along the expected track.&amp;quot; Localizers are a class of words that occur after clauses or noun phrases to denote temporal or spatial discourse relations. They can introduce a subordinate clause by themselves or together with a preposition. While the preposition is optional, the localizer is not. When both the preposition and the localizer occur, they form a paired discourse connective anchoring a discourse relation. Example (10) shows the preposition cjkB5B1and the localizer cjkCAB1form a paired discourse connective equivalent to the English subordinate conjunction &amp;quot;when&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4">  &amp;quot;A few days ago, when this reporter exclusively interviewed Wei Genshen, head of the EU Europe Commission delegation to China, and asked him to comment on the accomplishment of the cooperation between the two sides in the past year, without any hesitation he said: 'There was significant progress in the political relations, trade relations, and the cooperation in trade, etc. between EU and China.' &amp;quot; 4 What counts as an argument? This section examines the syntactic composition of arguments to discourse connectives in Chinese. Arguments of discourse relations are propositional situations such as events, states, or properties. As such an argument of a discourse relation can be realized as a clause or multiple clauses, a sentence or multiple sentences. Typically, a subordinate conjunction introduces clauses that are arguments in a discourse relation. Discourse adverbials and coordinate conjunctions, however, can take one or more sentences to be their arguments. The examples in (11) shows that arguments to discourse connectives can be a single clause (11a), multiple clauses (11b), a single sentence (11c) and multiple sentences (11d) respectively.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5">  &amp;quot;Even though the number of projects that use foreign investment that China approved of and contractual foreign investment both decreased compared with the same period last year, the foreign investment that has actually been used increased 27.01 percent.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Chinese athletes did not attend the twenty-ninth and the thirtieth world table tennis tournaments. Therefore, The replicated gold medals also include the gold medals in the yet-to-be-held forty-fifth world tourna- null &amp;quot;Is the return of sovereignty (to China) a plus or minus for Macao's future? 53 percent of people say they don't know. But to the question of whether they accept the resolution of the Taiwan issue with 'one country, two systems' like Hong Kong and Macao, 59 percent of the people say 'they cannot accept' . &amp;quot;</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="88" end_page="89" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5 Argument Scope
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Determining the scope of an argument to a discourse connective has proved to be the most challenging part of the discourse annotation. A lot of the effort goes into deciding when certain text units should be included in or excluded from the argument of a discourse connective. Under our annotation scheme, the prepositional phrases, which generally precede the subject in a Chinese clause, are included in the argument of a discourse connective, as illustrated in (12a). The material in the main clause that embeds  &amp;quot;Ren Zhigang also indicated that because the interest discrepancy between Hong Kong and the U.S.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> reaches 125 point, if the market is fully confident in the economic prospect of Hong Kong, there is still room for reducing interest rates.&amp;quot; A lot of the challenge in determining the scope of an argument stems from the fact that discourse structures are recursive. As such identifying the scope of an argument is effectively determining how the discourse relations are hierarchically organized. This is illustrated in (13), where the discourse relation anchored by the coordinate conjunction cjkB5AB&amp;quot;but&amp;quot; is embedded within the discourse relation anchored by the subordinate conjunction cjkC8E7cjkB9FB&amp;quot;if&amp;quot;. The ambiguity is whether the conditional clause introduced by &amp;quot;cjkC8E7cjkB9FB&amp;quot; has scope over one or two of the clauses co-ordinated bycjkB5AB&amp;quot;but&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  policies are effective, the economy of Asia is expected to recover, but there will not be a V-shaped high-speed recovery like the one after the financial crisis of Mexico and Argentina in 1994 and 1995.&amp;quot; Given our bottom-up approach in which discourse connectives anchor binary discourse relations, we do not explicitly annotate hierarchical structures between the arguments. However, such discourse relations can be deduced when some discourse relations are recursively embedded within another as arguments to another discourse connective.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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