الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Paraphrases are textual expressions that convey the same meaning using different surface forms. In linguistics, paraphrases are characterized by approximate equivalence. Apprehending the variability of language paraphrases plays an important role in many natural language applications including question answering, machine translation, and multi-document summarization. This research deals with the production and interaction of semantic and communicative information in the generation of paraphrases (= synonymous sentences) within the Meaning-Text theoretical framework. The language considered is English, but the discussion of the present study has universal implications, i.e. it is applicable to the generation of paraphrases in other languages as well. Two main questions are addressed: 1) Conditions for Semantic Representations (the starting point for the generation of paraphrases), i.e. constraints on combining—or pairing—Semantic and Communicative Structures. 2) Paraphrastic variation induced by variations of the Communicative Structure. The study shows the importance of the Meaning-Text Theory and its close relation to paraphrasing and introduces the problem of Semantic-Communicative pairings, i.e. Semantic Structure with a series of different Communicative Structures. |