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<Paper uid="P84-1002">
  <Title>CONVEYING IMPLICIT CONTENT IN NARRATIVE SUMMARW~S</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="5" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
THE Nggn FOR CONCEPTUAL gLLlWb'IS
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Ever since the original work by Bartlett, researchers have appreciated that people who are remembering a story some time after they have heard it typically fail to distinguish between events that were explicitly stated in the stray and throe that they only inferred while reading it. Present day story understaDding systems act in a ~imilar way by malntainin~ Oilily a lingie conceptual record of what they have understood regardless of its murte \[Jcehi &amp; Weischedel 1977, Graemer 1980, Dyer 1983\]. Since our summarization process starts from the conceptual representation of the story rather than the text itself, it too will be unable to make this distinction.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> This theory of memory has two consequences. One is that any decisions about what constituted the crux or point of the story must have been made at comprehension time rather than summarization time. This is one of the purposes of a plot unit ~tatiun. The other is that we now need to deliberately recalculate what information should be explicit in our summary and what should be left for the audience to infer; were this not done, the superfluous information in the summary would make it sound quite unnatural-as though it were being told by a person from a different society who did not have any commonsen~ understanding of the social context in which the story was set. How the explicit versus left-to-inference calculation turns out will vary with the tmmmary: the tame story can be summarized or retold in diffeie~.t ways depending on which character's point of view is taken or which events are emphasized. The plot unit graph is neutral on this question, and it will be an important part of what we do next in this research.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Decisions about conceptual ellipsis are made prior to any of the linguistic decim'uns about form; they are however linked to those later decim'ons since some linguistic forms will be more effective than others in indicating to the audience that an inference is intended. Certain marked choices of form will suggest to the reader that particular implications were ~'m the mind of the writer&amp;quot; at the time of generation. The conceptual decm'ons are thus the source  of clependencies that must be carried forward to the point where the text-form decis/ens will be made in order that the i~ht re~liTntio nt are chOOSe~. By the lalne tokeD there will also be dependencies percolating back to the conceptual ellipsis decisions indicating what alternative realizations are actually available in a given case and thus whether a partienlar implication can be adequately supported by the information that is included and the way it is phrased.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> AN~ The followin8 simple stray will demomarate the gene_&amp;quot;al phenomenou.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="5" end_page="5" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
THE COMSYS STORY
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> John and Mike were campot/ng for the same job at IBM. John got the job and Mike derided to stwn Ms own consulting f~m, COMSgS. W~hin three years, COMSg$ was flourfsMn&amp;. By that time, John had become dissatisfied wfth IBM so he asked Mike for a job. M~te spU~d~y turned ~n down.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> A analysis of this text in terms of plot unJet has &amp;quot;Competition&amp;quot; as a central unit in the graph, which would make it a candidate bash for a snmmaEy of the story. All competition unim have this pattern:</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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