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# Constructing a Lexicon of English Discourse Connectives

**Authors:** [Debopam Das](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/debopam-das/), [Tatjana Scheffler](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/tatjana-scheffler/), [Peter Bourgonje](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/peter-bourgonje/), [Manfred Stede](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/manfred-stede/) · **Year:** 2018 · **Venue:** SIGDIAL 2018 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W18-5042](https://aclanthology.org/W18-5042/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (paper); the lexicon's sense frequencies come from PDTB and RST-DT (LDC) — check its own licence before any use

[**38** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2888984656) openalex · 2026-10-19[**29** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/das-2018-constructing-lexicon-english-discourse-connectives/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the 19th Annual SIGdial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W18-50/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W18-5042/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W18-5042.pdf)
- [DOI 10.18653/v1/w18-5042](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-5042)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2888984656)

**Authors (4)**

1. [Debopam Das](https://openalex.org/A5081124051) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4958-7466) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2129805) · h 10 · 380 citations · 28 works
2. [Tatjana Scheffler](https://openalex.org/A5026766545) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7498-6202) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/48960928) · h 16 · 680 citations · 113 works
3. [Peter Bourgonje](https://openalex.org/A5016174489) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3541-0678) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/3490007) · h 12 · 562 citations · 65 works
4. [Manfred Stede](https://openalex.org/A5065382850) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6819-2043) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2574304) · h 30 · 6613 citations · 282 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-19); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

DiMLex-Eng is a lexicon of 149 English discourse connectives in the XML format of the German DiMLex. Entries were collected from the 100 connectives annotated in PDTB 2.0, the signals of the RST Signalling Corpus (where only about 18% of relations carry a connective or marker), and a list of 230 relational n-grams mined from RST-DT, filtered by a definition: not inflectable, meaning is a two-place relation, both arguments are abstract objects (usually clauses), the expression is fixed (not «for this excellent reason») and not compositional (*even though* is in; *especially when* or *and therefore* are not). Each entry gives orthographic variants, syntactic category (adverb, subordinator/preposition, coordinator, phrase), whether the word has non-connective uses, and the relations it signals with corpus frequencies (e.g. *by contrast*: Contrast 27 times, split into juxtaposition and opposition). Adding the RST signals raised coverage of RST-SC connective tokens from 87% to 95%.

## Ideas

- I1. Move Mova's connective knowledge out of code into one small data file of its own, in the paper's shape: connective, variants, category (`mark`, `cc`, `advmod`, phrase), «has non-connective uses» (*since* as time vs reason, *as*, *while*, *so*), and the Mova link(s) it can create (`cause`, `next`, `cond`, quote, none) with the condition that selects each. Today the table lives in `prag/src/frames.rs` and chapter 36 §11.1. Write it from Mova's own seeds and the chapter, not from PDTB counts; the frame reader reads it, and the chapter table is generated from it so the two cannot drift.
- I2. Apply the paper's two exclusion criteria to Mova's cue lists: fixed-expression and non-compositionality. *even though / even if* get their own entries; intensified forms (*just because*, *only after*) are parsed as the base connective plus a modifier. A test lists every multiword connective and checks the parser treats it as one `fixed` unit.
- I3. Use the «non-connective use» flag as a gate in the reader: for ambiguous connectives (*since*, *as*, *while*, *so*) the link is created only when the syntactic test for the connective reading passes (a finite clause follows; *so* not before an adjective), and the decision prints which test fired. Measure false `cause` links on the frame bench (precision of the cause role).

## For Mova

[36. Discourse relations and coherence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/) §6 (English connectives and their syntax), §11.1, §11.6 (connective senses not disambiguated). Code: `prag/src/frames.rs` (connective table → data file), [Subordinating conjunctions — mark](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/seeds/verbal/subordinators-mark/), [discourse only for interjections, particles, numbering and emoticons — proposal](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/dialects/mova/seeds/discourse-adverbs/). Measures: frame bench cause/next precision; a unit test over the connective list.

Topics: [Discourse analysis](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/discourse-analysis/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.18653/v1/w18-5042](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-5042)

```
@inproceedings{das2018constructing,
  title = {{Constructing a Lexicon of English Discourse Connectives}},
  author = {Das, Debopam and Scheffler, Tatjana and Bourgonje, Peter and Stede, Manfred},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th Annual SIGdial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/w18-5042},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-5042}
}
```

- [← previous "I'll be there for you": The One with Understanding Indirect Answers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/damgaard-2021-i-ll-be-there-you/)
- [next → Quoref: A Reading Comprehension Dataset with Questions Requiring Coreferential Reasoning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/dasigi-2019-quoref-reading-comprehension-dataset-questions/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

20 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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