Mid-depth Text Understanding by Abductive Chains for Topic Sentence Selection

This paper introduces a mid-depth text understanding methodology. By mid-depth we mean that the methodology is: (1) based on shallow text understanding, (2) accomplished with currently available linguistic instruments, and (3) focused towards understanding texts as deeply as possible. To realize the methodology, we set up two new linguistic devices for sentence extraction — sentence abstraction and abductive chains. Sentence abstraction is processing for sentence revision with concept abstraction. Abductive chains are lexical chains with abduction. The chain consists of abductive links which connect coherent parts of abstracted sentences. It aims to identify the causal propensity described or implied in the text as well as to delineate its recurring concepts. With this methodology, a preliminary attempt at mid-depth text understanding is made to locate the topic sentences of a given text. We expect that this methodology will lead us to develop another practical text summarization system.