Xiaorong Huang

• This paper deals with the reference choices involved in thegeneration of argumentative text. A piece of argument-ative text such as the proof of a mathematical theoremconveys a sequence of derivations. For each step of de-rivation, the premises (previously conveyed intermediateresults) and the inference method (such as the applica-tion of a particular theorem or definition) must be madeclear. The appropriateness of these references cruciallyaffects the quality of the text produced.Although not restricted to nominal phrases, our refer-ence decisions are similar to those concerning nominalsubsequent referring expressions: they depend on theavailability of the object referred to within a context andare sensitive to its attentional hierarchy . In this paper,we show how the current context can be appropriatelysegmented into an attentional hierarchy by viewing textgeneration as a combination of planned and unplannedbehavior, and how the discourse theory of Reichmann canbe adapted to handle our special reference problem.