Summarizing text documents by resolving co-referentiality among actors or objects around which a story unfolds

A system for characterizing the content of a document comprising:

• means for identifying a plurality of discourse referents in the document;
• means for dividing the document into topically relevant document segments;
• means for resolving co-referentiality among the discourse referents within, and across, the document segments;
• means for calculating salience values for the discourse referents based upon the resolving step;
• means for determining topic stamps for the document segments based upon discourse salience values of the associated discourse referents;
• and
• means for providing a capsule overview of the document, constructed from the topic stamps.

A method for characterizing the content of a document comprising the steps of:

• a) identifying a plurality of discourse referents in the document;
• b) dividing the document into topically relevant document segments;
• c) resolving co-referentiality among the discourse referents within, and across, the document segments, wherein the resolving step comprises linking the discourse referents by co-referentiality with each other to assess a frequency with which they appear within a document and to establish prominence;
• d) calculating salience values for the discourse referents based upon the resolving step;
• e) determining topic stamps for the document segments based upon discourse salience values of the associated discourse referents;
• and
• f) providing a capsule overview of the document, constructed from the topic stamps.

A system for characterizing the content of a document comprising:

• means for identifying a plurality of discourse referents in the document;
• means for dividing the document into topically relevant document segments;
• means for resolving co-referentiality among the discourse referents within, and across, the document segments wherein the resolving means comprises means for linking the discourse referents by co-referentiality with each other to assess a frequency with which they appear within a document and to establish prominence;
• means for calculating salience values for the discourse referents based upon the resolving step;
• means for determining topic stamps for the document segments based upon discourse salience values of the associated discourse referents;
• and
• means for providing a capsule overview of the document, constructed from the topic stamps.