Navigating electronic documents using domain discourse trees

A computer-implemented method of navigating text using an extended discourse tree, the method comprising:

• accessing an extended discourse tree representing a plurality of documents, wherein the extended discourse tree comprises a first discourse tree for a first document and a second discourse tree for a second document;
• determining, from the extended discourse tree, (i) a first elementary discourse unit that is responsive to a query from a user device and (ii) a first position that corresponds to the first elementary discourse unit;
• determining, from the extended discourse tree, a set of navigation options comprising (i) a first rhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit and a second elementary discourse unit of the first discourse tree and (ii) a second rhetorical relationship between the first elementary discourse unit and a third elementary discourse unit of the second discourse tree;
• presenting the first and second rhetorical relationships to a user device;
• and
• responsive to (i) receiving, from a user device, a selection of the first rhetorical relationship, presenting the second elementary discourse unit to the user device, or (ii) receiving, from the user device, a selection of the second rhetorical relationship, presenting the third elementary discourse unit to the user device.

A computer-implemented method for determining a rhetorical relationship between one or more documents, the method comprising:

• accessing a first discourse tree representing a first document of a set of documents and a second discourse tree representing a second document from the set of documents;
• obtaining a reference extended discourse tree from a set of extended discourse trees by applying the first discourse tree and the second discourse tree to a trained classification model, wherein the trained classification model iterates through the set of extended discourse trees to identify (i) a first candidate discourse tree and (ii) a second candidate discourse tree, wherein the first candidate discourse tree and the second candidate discourse tree are a best match for the first discourse tree and the second discourse tree;
• determining, from the reference extended discourse tree, one or more links between the first reference discourse tree and the second reference discourse tree;
• and
• propagating the one or more links to the first discourse tree and the second discourse tree, thereby creating an extended discourse tree.