Minimal Discourse Units: Can we define them, and why should we?
Liesbeth Degand, Anne-Catherine Simon · Digital Access to Libraries (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), l'Université de Namur (UNamur) and the Université Saint-Louis (USL-B)) · 2005
In spite of its crucial role in discourse segmentation, there is no consensus in the literature on what a minimal discourse unit is and how it should be identified. We claim that the minimal discourse unit should be defined in terms of two linguistic criteria: syntax and prosody. We develop a heuristics for identifying minimal discourse units in (spoken) discourse and illustrate this with a piece of spontaneous conversation.