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The German Vorfeld and Local Coherence

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Abstract

We present a method for improving local coherence in German with a positive effect on automatically as well as human-generated texts. We demonstrate that local coherence crucially depends on which constituent occupies the initial position in a sentence. To support our hypothesis, we provide statistical evidence based on a corpus investigation and on results of an experiment with human judges. Additionally, we implement our findings in a generation module for determining the Vorfeld constituent automatically.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EML Research gGmbH, NLP Group, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 33, 69118, Heidelberg, Germany

    Katja Filippova & Michael Strube

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  1. Katja Filippova
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  2. Michael Strube
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Correspondence to Katja Filippova.

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Filippova, K., Strube, M. The German Vorfeld and Local Coherence. J of Log Lang and Inf 16, 465–485 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-007-9044-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10849-007-9044-3

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