--- title: "The Penn Discourse Treebank — Miltsakaki 2004" description: "The paper introduces the PDTB project. It adds a discourse layer to the Penn Treebank and Propbank: discourse connectives, their two arguments…" authors: ["Eleni Miltsakaki", "Rashmi Prasad", "Aravind Joshi", "Bonnie Webber"] year: 2004 venue: "Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'04)" source: "https://aclanthology.org/L04-1386/" doi: "10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/miltsakaki-2004-penn-discourse-treebank/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/miltsakaki-2004-penn-discourse-treebank/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2004](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2004/) / The Penn Discourse Treebank # The Penn Discourse Treebank **Authors:** [Eleni Miltsakaki](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/eleni-miltsakaki/), [Rashmi Prasad](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/rashmi-prasad/), [Aravind Joshi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aravind-joshi/), [Bonnie Webber](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bonnie-webber/) · **Year:** 2004 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'04) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/L04-1386](https://aclanthology.org/L04-1386/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) (ACL Anthology, before 2016) — summary only [**307** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W1497300277) OpenAlex · 2026-10-14 · [**108** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/miltsakaki-2004-penn-discourse-treebank/cited-by/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read · [Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'04)](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/L04-1/) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/L04-1386/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/L04-1386.pdf) - [DOI 10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno](https://doi.org/10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1497300277) **Authors (4)** 1. [Eleni Miltsakaki](https://openalex.org/A5046422522) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1759302) · h 22 · 2880 citations · 71 works 2. [Rashmi Prasad](https://openalex.org/A5026474261) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3870-0630) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/143916481) · h 30 · 4553 citations · 81 works 3. [Aravind Joshi](https://openalex.org/A5109994521) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1714374) · h 58 · 15617 citations · 302 works 4. [Bonnie Webber](https://openalex.org/A5089032031) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4284-8216) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1736049) · h 47 · 9455 citations · 361 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The paper introduces the PDTB project. It adds a discourse layer to the Penn Treebank and Propbank: discourse connectives, their two arguments (Arg1 and Arg2), and, for implicit relations, an inserted connective. Connectives are of four kinds: subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, adverbials, and implicit ones. The paper reports a pilot. Two annotators marked 2,717 tokens of 10 explicit connectives and 386 implicit tokens. For the argument spans of explicit connectives, exact-match agreement is 90.2% (4,900 of 5,434 argument tokens). It is 92.4% for subordinating conjunctions and 71.8% for adverbials. Of the disagreements, 79% are partial overlaps, mostly over a governing verb, a dependent clause or a parenthetical. For implicit connectives, argument agreement is 85.1% (657 of 772 tokens), and agreement on the class of the inserted connective is 72% (307 tokens). The authors do not use kappa, because the spans do not fall into fixed categories. ## Ideas - I1. Report two agreement numbers for any Mova annotation: exact span and partial overlap. The paper's partial-match figure (94.5%) shows how much the choice of measure changes the result. - I2. Store each argument as a minimal span and a separate supplementary span. A rule can then use the minimal span for sense and the full span for retrieval. The same split fits the frames in `prag/src/frames.rs`. - I3. Use five coarse classes for inserted connectives (additive, cause-effect, temporal, contrast, restatement), as the paper does, and measure agreement on the same kind of sample. - I4. Report the adverbial and subordinating classes apart. The gap in the paper (92.4% vs 71.8%) shows where a rule-based argument finder is likely to fail, and the same split can be measured on Mova's output. ## For Mova The chapters are [languages/en/36-discourse-relations.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/) and [languages/en/38-dialogue-and-discourse-markers.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/38-dialogue-and-discourse-markers/). The code is `prag/src/frames.rs`. The measure is a two-annotator agreement check on a sample of Mova's own lesson annotations, with the two span measures and the per-class split above. Run it twice. The paper is a 2004 pilot with small counts, so the numbers are a guide, not a target. Topics: [Discourse analysis](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/discourse-analysis/) · [Treebanks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/treebanks/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno](https://doi.org/10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno) ```bibtex @inproceedings{miltsakaki2004penn, title = {{The Penn Discourse Treebank}}, author = {Miltsakaki, Eleni and Prasad, Rashmi and Joshi, Aravind and Webber, Bonnie}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'04)}, year = {2004}, doi = {10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno}, url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/2rrr3zi7vbno} } ``` - [← previous The NomBank Project: An Interim Report](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/meyers-2004-nombank-project-interim-report/) - [next → Training Tree Transducers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/graehl-2004-training-tree-transducers/) - [↑ back to papers of 2004](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2004/) ## References 11 references, 5 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Asher, Nicholas, 1993. Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1715-9) 2. Carlson, Lynn, Daniel Marcu, and Mary Ellen Okurowski, 2003. Current Directions in Discourse and Dialogue, chapter Building a Discourse-Tagged Corpus in the Framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Carlson%2C+Lynn%2C+Daniel+Marcu%2C+and+Mary+Ellen+Okurowski%2C+2003%2E+Current+Directions+in+Discourse+and+Dialogue%2C+chapter+Building+a+Discourse%2DTagged+Corpus+in+the+Framework+of+Rhetorical+Structure+Theory%2E+K) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/carlson-2001-building-discourse-tagged-corpus-framework/) 3. Gaizauskas, Rob, Patrick Hanks, James Pustejovsky, Roser Sauri, Andrew See, Andrea Setzer, Lisa Ferro, and Beth Sundheim., 2003. The timebank corpus. In Corpus Linguistics 2003.. Lancaster, U.K. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Gaizauskas%2C+Rob%2C+Patrick+Hanks%2C+James+Pustejovsky%2C+Roser+Sauri%2C+Andrew+See%2C+Andrea+Setzer%2C+Lisa+Ferro%2C+and+Beth+Sundheim%2E%2C+2003%2E+The+timebank+corpus%2E+In+Corpus+Linguistics+2003%2E%2E+Lancaster%2C+U%2EK%2E) 4. Kingsbury, Paul and Martha Palmer, 2002. From Treebank to Propbank. In Third International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC-02, Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kingsbury%2C+Paul+and+Martha+Palmer%2C+2002%2E+From+Treebank+to+Propbank%2E+In+Third+International+Conference+on+Language+Resources+and+Evaluation%2C+LREC%2D02%2C+Las+Palmas%2C+Canary+Islands%2C+Spain%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kingsbury-2002-treebank-propbank/) 5. Knott, Alistair, 1996. A Data-Driven Methodology for Motivating a Set of Coherence Relations. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Knott%2C+Alistair%2C+1996%2E+A+Data%2DDriven+Methodology+for+Motivating+a+Set+of+Coherence+Relations%2E+Ph%2ED%2E+thesis%2C+University+of+Edinburgh%2E) 6. Marcus, Mitch, Beatrice Santorini, and Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, 1993. Building a large annotated corpus of english: the Penn Treebank. Computational Linguistics, 19:313–330. [↗](https://doi.org/10.21236/ada273556) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bank-1993-marcus-building-large-annotated-corpus-english/) 7. Miltsakaki, Eleni, Rashmi Prasad, Aravind Joshi, and Bonnie Webber, 2004. Annotating discourse connectives and their arguments. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Frontiers in Corpus Annotation. Boston, Massachussetts. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Miltsakaki%2C+Eleni%2C+Rashmi+Prasad%2C+Aravind+Joshi%2C+and+Bonnie+Webber%2C+2004%2E+Annotating+discourse+connectives+and+their+arguments%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Workshop+on+Frontiers+in+Corpus+Annotation%2E+Boston) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/miltsakaki-2004-annotating-discourse-connectives-their-arguments/) 8. Mitkov, Ruslan, R. Evans, C. Orasan, C. Barbu, L. Jones, and V. Sotirova, 2000. Coreference and anaphora: developing annotating tools, annotated resources and annotation strategies. In Proceedings of the Discourse Anaphora and Anaphora Resolution Colloquium (DAARC 2000), Lancaster, U.K.. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mitkov%2C+Ruslan%2C+R%2E+Evans%2C+C%2E+Orasan%2C+C%2E+Barbu%2C+L%2E+Jones%2C+and+V%2E+Sotirova%2C+2000%2E+Coreference+and+anaphora%3A+developing+annotating+tools%2C+annotated+resources+and+annotation+strategies%2E+In+Proceedings+of+) 9. Muller, Christoph, Stefan Rapp, and Michael Strube, 2002. Applying co-training to reference resolution. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Philadelpha PA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Muller%2C+Christoph%2C+Stefan+Rapp%2C+and+Michael+Strube%2C+2002%2E+Applying+co%2Dtraining+to+reference+resolution%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%2C+Philadelp) 10. Siegel, Sidney and N. J. Castellan, 1988. Nonparamateric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Siegel%2C+Sidney+and+N%2E+J%2E+Castellan%2C+1988%2E+Nonparamateric+Statistics+for+the+Behavioral+Sciences%2E+McGraw%2DHill%2C+2nd+edition%2E) 11. Webber, Bonnie, Matthew Stone, Aravind Joshi, and Alistair Knott, 2003. Anaphora and discourse structure. Computational Linguistics, 29:545–587. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1162/089120103322753347) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/webber-2003-anaphora-discourse-structure/)