A temporal analysis of natural language narrative text

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dc.contributor.authorRamachandran, Venkateshwaranen
dc.contributor.committeechairRoach, John W.en
dc.contributor.committeememberFox, Edward A.en
dc.contributor.committeememberMcKeon, Donald W.en
dc.contributor.departmentComputer Science and Applicationsen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T21:31:08Zen
dc.date.adate2009-03-12en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T21:31:08Zen
dc.date.issued1990en
dc.date.rdate2009-03-12en
dc.date.sdate2009-03-12en
dc.description.abstractWritten English texts in the form of narratives often describe events that occur in definite chronological sequence. Understanding the concept of time in such texts is an essential aspect of text comprehension and forms the basis for answering time related questions pertaining to the source text. It is our hypothesis that time in such texts is expressed in terms of temporal orderings of the situations described and can be modelled by a linear representation of these situations. This representation conforms to the traditional view of the linearity of time where it is regarded as a horizontal line called the timeline. Information indicating the temporal ordering of events is often explicitly specified in the source text. Where such indicators are missing, semantic relations between the events enforce temporal orderings. This thesis proposes and implements a practical model for automatically processing paragraphs of narrative fiction for explicit chronological information and employing certain guidelines for inferring such information in the absence of explicit indications. Although we cannot claim to have altogether eliminated the need for expensive semantic inferencing within our model, we have certainly devised guidelines to eliminate the expense in certain cases where explicit temporal indicators are missing. We have also characterized some cases through our test data where semantic inferencing proves necessary to augment the capabilities of our model.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.format.extentxii, 221 leavesen
dc.format.mediumBTDen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.otheretd-03122009-040648en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03122009-040648/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/41466en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartLD5655.V855_1990.R352.pdfen
dc.relation.isformatofOCLC# 23604794en
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subject.lccLD5655.V855 1990.R352en
dc.subject.lcshInformation storage and retrieval systems -- Researchen
dc.subject.lcshNatural language processing (Computer science)en
dc.titleA temporal analysis of natural language narrative texten
dc.typeThesisen
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
thesis.degree.disciplineComputer Science and Applicationsen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

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