A computational approach to topic and focus in a production model
Vincenza Pignataro · 1988
The aim of the presented research is the development of a linguistic model of the functional concepts topic and focus that can be used in natural language processing systems. The paper deals with two points of investigation: the first point concerns the identification of the topic and focus of an utterance. Within the frame of the linguistic discussion on such concepts topic and focus will be considered as semantic, pragmatic and international rather then as syntactic phenomena. An operational definition of topic and focus is obtained on the basis of basic semantic-pragmatic categories which are defined in relation to a specified context. The second point concerns the integration of the topic and focus identification rules in a system for natural language generation. The aim of the application is the validation of the developed topic and focus model with respect to some aspect of the generation process like thematic progression and accent mapping. Moreover the identification of topic and focus can be used to make prediction about the thematic progression and the accent mapping in the blocks world texts. For the prediction of indefinite pronouns like "one" and of definite articles within a noun phrase it is necessary to recur to the semantic-pragmatic categories.