COST Action Structuring Discourse in Multilingual Europe

Abstract

Effective discourse in any language is characterized by clear relations between sentences and coherent structure. But languages vary in how relations and structure are signalled. While monolingual dictionaries and grammars can characterise the words and sentences of a language and bilingual dictionaries can do the same between languages, there is nothing similar for discourse. For discourse, however, discourse-annotated corpora are becoming available in individual languages. The Action will facilitate European multilingualism by (1) identifying and creating a portal into such resources within Europe – including annotation tools, search tools, and discourse-annotated corpora; (2) delineating the dimensions and properties of discourse annotation across corpora; (3) organising these properties into a sharable taxonomy; (4) encouraging the use of this taxonomy in subsequent discourse annotation and in cross-lingual search and studies of devices that relate and structure discourse; and (5) promoting use of the portal, its resources and sharable taxonomy. With partners from across Europe, TextLink will unify numerous but scattered linguistic resources on discourse structure. With its resources searchable by form and/or meaning and a source of valuable correspondences, TextLink will enhance the experience and performance of human translators, lexicographers, language technology and language learners alike.