hu Proceedings of the A CL-93 workshop on inteutiouality attd Structure in Discourse Relations, June 21, Colum- 
bus, Ohio 
The Representation of Interdependencies between Communicative Goals and 
Rhetorical Relations in the Framework of Multimedia Document Generation 
Elisabeth A. Maier, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (IRST), Trento, Italy 
maier@irst.it 
This paper briefly outlines observa.tions fi'om texts made with respect to rhetorical relations 
and communicative goals. Then it will be shown how these ol)servations have been encoded into 
knowledge resources which are part of an integrated architecture for the gelmration of multimedia 
output. 
Both communicative goals and rhetorical relations are virtual constructs - surface signals hint 
at their existence. In the following we briefly discuss the various linguistic means by which both 
rhetorical relations and communicative goals are signaled in texts. 
Identification of Rhetorical Relations in Text 
For rhetorical relations surface signals are cue phrases like e.g. conjunctions. If no cue phrase 
exists for a relation lexical cohesion may play that role. 
Example 1: (Cue Phrase) 
When a pathway is used several times in succession, the threshohl falls. 
Example 2: (Lexical Cohesion) 
Water was all about thenl, was carrying them, was putting t\]|ell! down, was sinking, 
was ebbing away. 
In Example 1 the CONDITIONality ill the link between the two sentences is expressed by means 
of the conjunction when. In example 2, on the contrary, the SEQUENCE in the events reported is 
implicit in the verbs which can be inferred as temporally linked. This example also shows how 
a rhetorical relation contril)utes to the development of the topic and the progression of theme. 
\]t can be observed, ior instance, that the SEQUENCE relation preserves the theme over a chain 
of events (on that point see also \[Matthiessen and Bateman, '91\]). 
Identification of Comnaunicative Goals in Text 
The phenomena for which comnmnicative goals are responsible axe quite (liIthrent. The effects 
of a communicative goal on a text unit can best 1)e observed wheu the text unit consists of 
various sentences. These sentences usually sha.re a nuutber of features which can be considered 
as characteristics of the goal at hand. 
1. Sentences "belonging" to the same communicative goal are centered around a global (para- 
graph) focus, which represents the overall topic of the text unit. 
2. Text units corresponding to the same communicative goal ca.u be characterized by the use 
of a restricted set of rhetorical relations - this is one way how communicative goals and 
rhetorical relations interact. 
