Enabling rhetorical analysis via the use of communicative discourse trees

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable program instructions that when executed, configure a processing device to perform operations comprising:

• determining, for a question sentence, a question communicative discourse tree comprising a question root node;
• determining, for an answer sentence, an answer communicative discourse tree, wherein the answer communicative discourse tree comprises an answer root node, wherein determining a communicative discourse tree from a discourse tree comprises matching, in the discourse tree, each elementary discourse unit that has a verb to a verb signature,
• wherein each verb signature comprises the verb and a respective thematic role that describes a relationship between the verb and other words;
• responsive to identifying that the question root node and the answer root node are identical, merging the communicative discourse trees;
• creating a syntactic parse tree from the question sentence and the answer sentence;
• merging the syntactic parse tree and the merged communicative discourse tree into a parse thicket;
• computing a level of complementarity between the question communicative discourse tree and the answer communicative discourse tree by applying a predictive model to the parse thicket;
• and
• responsive to determining that the level of complementarity is above a threshold, identifying the question sentence and the answer sentence as complementary and sending text associated with either the question sentence or the answer sentence to an external device.

A system comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable program instructions;
• and
• a processing device communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium for executing the computer-executable program instructions, wherein executing the computer-executable program instructions configures the processing device to perform operations comprising:
• determining, for a question sentence, a question communicative discourse tree comprising a question root node;
• determining, for an answer sentence, an answer communicative discourse tree, wherein the answer communicative discourse tree comprises an answer root node, wherein determining a communicative discourse tree from a discourse tree comprises matching, in the discourse tree, each elementary discourse unit that has a verb to a verb signature,
• wherein each verb signature comprises the verb and a respective thematic role that describes a relationship between the verb and other words;
• responsive to identifying that the question root node and the answer root node are identical, merging the communicative discourse trees;
• creating a syntactic parse tree from the question sentence and the answer sentence;
• merging the syntactic parse tree and the merged communicative discourse tree into a parse thicket;
• computing a level of complementarity between the question communicative discourse tree and the answer communicative discourse tree by applying a predictive model to the parse thicket;
• and
• responsive to determining that the level of complementarity is above a threshold, identifying the question sentence and the answer sentence as complementary and sending text associated with either the question sentence or the answer sentence to an external device.