Joint semantic discourse models for automatic multi-document summarization

• Paula C. F. Cardoso UFLA
• Thiago A. S. Pardo USP

Abstract

Automatic multi-document summarization aims at selecting the essential content of related documents and presenting it in a summary. In this paper, we propose some methods for automatic summarization based on Rhetorical Structure Theory and Cross-document Structure Theory. They are chosen in order to properly address the relevance of information, multidocument phenomena and subtopical distribution in the source texts. The results show that using semantic discourse knowledge in strategies for content selection produces summaries that are more informative.