Discourse relations and evaluation

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Abstract

In this paper, we examine the role of discourse relations (relations between propositions) in the interpretation of evaluative or opinion words. Through a combination of Rhetorical Structure Theory (or RST; Mann and Thompson, 1988 ) and Appraisal Theory ( Martin and White, 2005 ), we analyse how different discourse relations modify the evaluative content of opinion words, and what impact the nucleus–satellite structure in RST has on the evaluation. We conduct a corpus study, examining and annotating over 3,000 evaluative words in fifty movie reviews in the SFU Review Corpus ( Taboada, 2008 ) with respect to five parameters: word category (noun, verb, adjective or adverb), prior polarity (positive, negative or neutral), RST structure (both nucleus–satellite status and relation type) and change of polarity as a result of being part of a discourse relation (Intensify, Downtone, Reversal or No Change). Results show that relations such as Concession, Elaboration, Evaluation, Evidence and Restatement most frequently intensify the polarity of opinion words, although the majority of evaluative words do not undergo changes in their polarity related to the type of relation that they are a part of. We also find that most opinion words (about 70 percent) are positioned in the nucleus, confirming a hypothesis based on the literature that nuclei are the most important units when extracting opinion automatically.

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