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# Intentions, Information, and Inference: Two Rhetorical Questions

**Authors:** [Jon Oberlander](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/jon-oberlander/) · **Year:** 1993 · **Venue:** Intentionality and Structure in Discourse Relations (workshop) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W93-0226](https://aclanthology.org/W93-0226/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) (ACL Anthology, before 2016) — summary only

[Intentionality and Structure in Discourse Relations](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W93-02/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W93-0226/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W93-0226.pdf)

**Authors (1)**

1. Oberlander, Jon

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

A short position paper on discourse structure. Moore and Pollack argued that hearers can infer intentional relations from informational ones and back. Oberlander takes that inference model for granted and asks two questions that came up while modelling it in SDRT and DICE. First: when is an intentional relation not an intentional relation? His answer is that a pair of segments can carry two intentional relations at once (for example Narration and Result between two sentences about Betjeman and a best-seller). Second: when is an informational relation not an informational one? His answer is that "supports" is not a fixed domain relation: whether A supports B or B supports A depends on each speaker's network of prior beliefs, so both parties can be right. No quantitative data are reported; the argument is by worked examples.

## Ideas

- I1. [36. Discourse relations and coherence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/): allow a pair of discourse segments to carry a set of relations, not one. In the world's discourse store (`world/src/narr.rs`), keep a BTreeSet of labels per pair and measure how often the school texts need more than one label.
- I2. Mark "supports"-type relations as belief-relative in `prag/src/infer.rs`: when the direction of an evidential link depends on what the world already holds, record the dependency instead of fixing a direction. Measure the share of such links in a held-out set of school lessons.
- I3. A small negative control: swap the two segments of a Result pair and check that the system reports the flip only for belief-relative relations, not for causes.

## For Mova

The chapter is [36. Discourse relations and coherence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/), with a link to [33. Implicature and presupposition](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/33-implicature-and-presupposition/) for the inference step. The code is `world/src/narr.rs` (narrative relations) and `prag/src/infer.rs`. The measure: count segment pairs with more than one relation, and the number of relations whose direction changes when the world's prior facts change; run twice to check determinism. The paper gives no numbers, so every threshold must be set on Mova's own data.

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.

```
@inproceedings{oberlander1993intentions,
  title = {{Intentions, Information, and Inference: Two Rhetorical Questions}},
  author = {Oberlander, Jon},
  booktitle = {Intentionality and Structure in Discourse Relations},
  year = {1993},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/W93-0226/}
}
```

- [← previous Preventing False Temporal Implicatures: Interactive Defaults for Text Generation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/oberlander-1992-preventing-false-temporal-implicatures-interactive/)
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- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

8 references, 0 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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4. K n o t t , A. a n d Dale, It. [1992] Using Linguistic Phenomena to Motiva.te a Set of Rhetorical Relations. HCRC/ltP-39, Huma.n C, ommunication Research Centre, December, 1992. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=K+n+o+t+t+%2C+A%2E+a+n+d+Dale%2C+It%2E+%5B1992%5D+Using+Linguistic+Phenomena+to+Motiva%2Ete+a+Set+of+Rhetorical+Relations%2E+HCRC%2FltP%2D39%2C+Huma%2En+C%2C+ommunication+Research+Centre%2C+December%2C+1992%2E)
5. Lascarides, A. a n d A s h e r , N. [1991] Discourse Relations and Defea.sible Knowledge. In P1o-ceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of A.~.sociatio~ for Comp'utatio'ual Linguistics, 1)p55--63. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lascarides%2C+A%2E+a+n+d+A+s+h+e+r+%2C+N%2E+%5B1991%5D+Discourse+Relations+and+Defea%2Esible+Knowledge%2E+In+P1o%2Dceedings+of+the+29th+Annual+Meeting+of+A%2E%7E%2Esociatio%7E+for+Comp%27utatio%27ual+Linguistics%2C+1%29p55%2D%2D63%2E)
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7. M o o r e , J. a n d Pollack, M. [1992] A Problem tor RST: The Need ['or Multi-Level Disc(mrse Analysis. Comlmtational Linguistics , 18,537-544. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=M+o+o+r+e+%2C+J%2E+a+n+d+Pollack%2C+M%2E+%5B1992%5D+A+Problem+tor+RST%3A+The+Need+%5B%27or+Multi%2DLevel+Disc%28mrse+Analysis%2E+Comlmtational+Linguistics+%2C+18%2C537%2D544%2E)
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