Ranking of potential questions

Abstract

Questions are an integral part of discourse. They provide structure and support the exchange of information. One linguistic theory, the Questions Under Discussion model, takes question structures as integral to the functioning of a coherent discourse. This theory has not been tested on the count of its validity for predicting observations in real dialogue data though. In the present study, a system for ranking explicit and implicit questions by their appropriateness in a dialogue is presented. This system implements constraints and principles put forward in the linguistic literature.