1 Annotation Guidelines for the Penn Discourse Treebank Part B Eleni Miltsakaki, Rashmi Prasad, Aravind Joshi, Bonnie Webber

2 Brief summary  Annotation of discourse connectives and their arguments.  Discourse connectives: subordinate conjunctions, coordinate conjunctions, adverbials, empty.  Discourse connectives express relations between at least 2 events or states.  Legal argument: a clause at minimum.  Annotation tool: WordFreak  Tags: CONN,ARG1, ARG2, SUP1, SUP2  Features: Search, discontinuous text selection, comment box.

3 Basic types of clauses Tensed Non-tensed Main Subordinate Subordinate Complement Adverbial Relative Infinitival Participial

4 Examples Main: Tom left Complement: Mary said that Tom left Adverbial: Tom left when he finished Relative: Tom, who finished early, left Infinitival: Tom wants to leave Participial: Tom spend the day watching TV

5 “Small clauses”  Complements (“objects”) of certain verbs  Verb “be” is understood but may not be explicit (1) I consider Mary a smart student.

6 “Small clauses” as arguments  Selecting just the small clause is sufficient even though there is no explicit verb (2) I consider Mary a smart student although she failed her exams.

7 Relative clauses as arguments  Selecting just the relative clause is sufficient  Syntactic information from Treebank will help us identify the head of the relative clause (3) I bought some books i which (null i ) were very expensive, even though they were second hand.

8 Distinction between a relative clause and an NP  … a reference to spiders that attract males and then kill them after mating.  ‘that attract males and then kill them after mating’  relative clause  OK ARG  ‘spiders that attract makes and then kill them after mating’  Noun Phrase  NOT OK ARG

9 Modified connectives  As other syntactic categories, connectives can be modified.  E.g., only when, largely because, especially after, etc.  In such cases, select both the connective and the modifier.  When you see a comma before the connective, select just the connective. In such cases, the modifier does not modify the connective. (4) He wears jeans only, because he wants to have a casual look. (5) He wears jeans only because he wants to have a casual look.

10 Words that look like discourse connectives  Reminder:  Discourse relations require clausal interpretations.  Ignore instances of “connectives” in your set if they are not associated with a clause  Examples (6) These mainly involved such areas as materials --advanced soldering machines, for example – and medical devices derived from experimentation in space. (7) They bought wine and beer. (8) Mary, also John, will leave late today.

11 Not all adverbials are connectives  Some adverbials do not express a discourse relation. The clause that contain them is sufficient for the interpretation.  An adverbial counts as a connectives when it expresses a relation between at least TWO situations in the discourse. In: (9) John did not finish the report. Therefore, we will postpone today’s meeting. Out: (10) John was hungry. Strangely, he only ordered a fruit salad.

12 ARG1 and ARG2 for double connectives  For double connectives such as On one hand … on the other hand, If…then  Select the two connectives using the discontinuous text selection feature and enter them together under CONN.  Mark as ARG1 the clause that contains the first connective.  Mark as ARG2 the clause that contains the second connectives. (11) If you finish your homework before noon, then you may go to the movies. ARG1= you finish your homework before noon ARG2=you may go to the movies

13 A few more conventions  Exclude punctuation marks appearing at the end of the clause that you are selecting.  When selecting the content of a complement clause, include ‘that’ in your selection.  When selecting a relative clause, include the relative pronoun in your selection.  When a connective appears in the clause you’re selecting as an argument, include that connective.

14 The case of VP coordination  Do not annotated connectives that related two verb phrases.  Diagnostic: missing subject in the second (tensed) verb. (12) OUT: Mary finished her food and left. (13) IN: Mary finished her food and she left.

15 Some hard cases: “As”  Multiple meanings of “as”  Temporal (14) He tripped over a bunch of plugs as he was leaving the room.  Causal (15) W. U. had major losses as its telex business faltered in the face of competition from facsimile machines.  Annotate “as” only if it has a temporal or causal interpretation.  Do NOT annotate, for example: (16) As she puts it, there’s no hope. (17) We do as we are told, as is the rule.

16 Some hard cases: “So”  “So” expresses a consequence relation.  But it’s not always easy to identify the consequence: (18) She flunked the exam. So, what’s next? (19) You said she didn’t work hard. So, if you believe this, you must be right.  Sometimes it may be hard to identify ARG.  If you run into such cases, let us know and make a comment in the comment box.

17 Some hard cases: “Nor”  “Nor” can be found:  By itself: annotate as regular connective. (20) This has nothing to do with you. Nor will it ever.  In a “neither … nor” construction: annotate as a double connective.  Sometimes it may be hard to identify ARG1. In this case, leave the ARG1 slot empty and make a comment in the comment box.  “Neither … nor” in VP coordination: Do not annotate (21) In doing so, he neither rejected a socialist planned economy nor embraced the free market.

18 When to exclude conns from args  Do not include a connective in the selection of an argument if it does not belong with the clause selected as an argument.  Some such hard cases include the coordinate conjunctions “and” and “but”.  But make sure you include the connective when it belongs with the selected clause even if it’s at a distance. (22) But, say Mr. Dinkins, he did get an office. Therefore he shouldn’t complain.

19 Implicit conns: multiple interpretations  If you identify more than one relation between adjacent sentences  And therefore are able to provide more than one explicit connective  Put the one that you think most likely first and add the rest as follows:  ;;;CONN=because ;;;CONN=nevertheless ;;;CONN=moreover  If you think there is NO relation between the two sentence that can be expressed with a connective type NONE in the comment box. Do not just leave the comment box empty.