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<Paper uid="C82-1011">
  <Title>FRAME BASED RECOGNITION OF THEME CONTINUITY</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="71" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
INTRODUCTION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> This paper describes a system which interprets the semantic theme of a text as a mapping of the semantic network of states associated in the text with one or more theme objects onto an established semantic frame. Theme objects are determined on the basis of the syntactic distinction of thematic and rhematic (topic - Comment) components of a sentence. The concept of &amp;quot;a frame&amp;quot; as used here is that of a semantic representation of experience~ whose functional roles are related, rather than of a psychological representation, where physical properties of an object which do not bear any functional relevance to the definition of the object and its relationship to other components of the frame are included.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The problem of recognizing ccntinuity and shifts in text analysis is generally defined in terms of identifying the text's themes. It is apparent from examples like (i - 2) that a system which tries to discover continuity on the sole basis of searching for antecedent references for a pronoun or synonym is inadequate where a text is developed through the techniques of elaboration, analogy, comparison and other styles involving implied dependency.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> (i) (2) The store was crowded. The marketing campaign had been a Success.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Harold notified hfs lawyer. A storm was brewing.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> In order to identify the implied theme object in text samples such as these, the system described in this paper makes use of the distinction ~f the syntactic categories &amp;quot;theme&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;rheme&amp;quot; developed by the Prague School of Linguistics. Once it has determined the sentential theme it further relates this th~me to a</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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