[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/gessler-2019-discourse-signal-annotation-system-rst/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [docs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/) / [papers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/) / A Discourse Signal Annotation System for RST Trees # A Discourse Signal Annotation System for RST Trees **Authors:** [Luke Gessler](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/luke-gessler/), [Yang Liu](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/yang-liu/), [Amir Zeldes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/amir-zeldes/) · **Year:** 2019 · **Venue:** DISRPT 2019 (Workshop on Discourse Relation Parsing and Treebanking) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W19-2708](https://aclanthology.org/W19-2708/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) [**9** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2963756831) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[**9** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/gessler-2019-discourse-signal-annotation-system-rst/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the Workshop on Discourse Relation Parsing and Treebanking 2019](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W19-27/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W19-2708/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W19-2708.pdf) - [DOI 10.18653/v1/w19-2708](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w19-2708) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2963756831) **Authors (3)** 1. [Luke Gessler](https://openalex.org/A5057951081) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4996-9045) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1389389165) · h 6 · 81 citations · 26 works 2. Yang Liu [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/11665731) 3. [Amir Zeldes](https://openalex.org/A5089212858) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8016-6753) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2548420) · h 16 · 1524 citations · 238 works Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The paper extends rstWeb, a browser tool for building Rhetorical Structure Theory trees, so that each relation in the tree can carry the signals that let a reader recognise it. A signal has four parts: the relation it supports, a possibly empty list of tokens (genre or layout signals have none), a type (discourse marker, semantic, syntactic, graphical, genre…) and a subtype (e.g. lexical chain, repetition). Earlier signal corpora either had no tree (PDTB) or did not anchor signals to tokens (the RST Signalling Corpus). On three re-annotated RST-SC documents (506 tokens, ~90 signals) the anchoring agreement rose from 86.0% / kappa 0.52 with a grid tool to 90.9% / 0.77 with the new interface. The tool was then used to add signals to the GUM corpus across eight genres. ## Ideas - I1. Record the signal of every link in Mova's frames, in the paper's four-part form: a `cause` or `next` link keeps the token(s) that produced it («because», «so», «and then», a purpose *to*) or a tokenless type (sentence order, a repeated entity). Today `Frame::how` explains roles but `cause`/`next` are bare indices in `prag/src/frames.rs`. `world frames` would print «cause→#1 [DM because]», and errors can be grouped by signal. - I2. With signals recorded, report cause and next precision per signal type on the frame bench (`world frames bench`). Links from sentence order alone are expected to be the weakest; this tells whether to keep, restrict or drop them, with a number per type. - I3. Tokenless signals matter in tales too: a new paragraph, a quote ending, «Once upon a time». Add them as signal types of `next` and check how often the bench gold has a `next` link across a paragraph break. ## For Mova [36. Discourse relations and coherence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/) §6 (connectives), §10 (segmentation and parsing), §11.1 (links between frames). Code: `prag/src/frames.rs` (link signal next to `cause`/`next`), `prag/src/fbench.rs` (per-signal scores). Measures: frame bench cause/next precision and recall by signal type. GUM's signal layer is NC: tests only. 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/w19-2708](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w19-2708) ``` @inproceedings{gessler2019discourse, title = {{A Discourse Signal Annotation System for RST Trees}}, author = {Gessler, Luke and Liu, Yang and Zeldes, Amir}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Discourse Relation Parsing and Treebanking 2019}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.18653/v1/w19-2708}, url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w19-2708} } ``` - [← previous Surprisal and Satisfaction: Towards an Information-theoretic Characterization of Presuppositions with a Diachronic Application](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/gergel-2017-surprisal-satisfaction-information-theoretic-characterization/) - [next → WikiCoref: An English Coreference-annotated Corpus of Wikipedia Articles](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/ghaddar-2016-wikicoref-english-coreference-annotated-corpus/) - [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/) ## References 2 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Table 1: Comparison with Liu and Zeldes (2019).* Lynn Carlson, Daniel Marcu, and Mary Ellen Okurowski. 2003. Building a discourse-tagged corpus in the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. In Current and New Directions in Discourse and Dialogue, Text, Speech and Language Technology 22, pages 85–112. Kluwer, Dordrecht. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Table+1%3A+Comparison+with+Liu+and+Zeldes+%282019%29%2E%2A+Lynn+Carlson%2C+Daniel+Marcu%2C+and+Mary+Ellen+Okurowski%2E+2003%2E+Building+a+discourse%2Dtagged+corpus+in+the+framework+of+Rhetorical+Structure+Theory%2E+In+Curr) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/carlson-2001-building-discourse-tagged-corpus-framework/) 2. Debopam Das and Maite Taboada. 2017. Signalling of coherence relations in discourse, beyond discourse markers. Discourse Processes, pages 1–29. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2017.1379327)