Information Structure in Discourse Representation

This book presents an approach that integrates Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), information structure and Combinatory Categorial Grammar into a single framework, which is given the name Unification-based Combinatory Categorial Grammar (UCCG). A crucial concept in the book is the inherent relatedness of intonation and information structure: intonation is a manifestation of the underlying information structure. The book first shows how information structure can be included in DRT semantics in an uncomplicated yet principled way, and then incorporates the semantic representation into a unification-based grammar formalism. UCCG can be employed to infer information structure from a prosodically annotated text, as well as to generate such text from a semantic representation that includes information structure. The book concentrates on the former. However, the main practical application of the formalism foreseen for the near future is in spoken language dialog systems, where it can be harnessed to generate context-appropriate intonation.