Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization

Abstract

Rhetorical Structure Theory is a descriptive theory of a major aspect of the organization of natural text. It is a linguistically useful method for describing natural texts, characterizing their structure primarily in terms of relations that hold between parts of the text. This paper establishes a new definitional foundation for RST. The paper also examines three claims of RST: the predominance of nucleus/satellite structural patterns, the functional basis of hierarchy, and the communicative role of text structure. © 1988, Walter de Gruyter. All rights reserved.