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<Paper uid="C86-1015">
  <Title>SENTENCE ADVERB I ALS IN A SYSTEM OF QUEST I ON ANSWER I NG W I THOUT A PREARRANGED DATA BASE</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
Abstract
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In the present paper we provide a report on a joint approach to the computational treatment of sentence adverbials (such as surprisingly, presumably or probably) and focussing adverbials (such as onl~ or a__ E least, including negation (not) and some other adverbial expressions, such as for examE_ ~ or inter alia) within a system of question answering without a prearranged data base (TIBAQ).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> This approach is based on a joint theoretical account of the expressions in question in the framework of a functional description of language; we argue that in the primary case, the expressions in question occupy, in the underlying topic-focus articulation of a sentence, the focus-initial position, extending their scope over the focus, or the new information, of a sentence, thus specifying, in a broad sense of the word, how the new information of a sentence holds. On the surface the expressions in question are usually moved to scope-ambiguous positions, which can be analyzed by means of several general strategies.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>