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A central purpose of many documents is to persuade. Especially
interesting, then, are relations among documents that reveal the
arguments relating among the documents [Sitter92] . The law provides several
interesting examples, as shown in Figure (figure) (taken from ,
from Rose Fig. 7.4). Rose enumerates four relations often found in legal
documents, from simple reference to more elaborate logical relations
such as exception.
While less explicit than within legal documents,
educational materials also have implicit or explicit PREREQUISITE
relationships assumed by a text's author. Figure (figure) shows
dependencies amongh this book's chapters. In interdisciplinary papers,
it is common to have several introductory sections, providing background
for experts in one field who may not have requisite background in
another. When taken across many texts, such a prerequisite structure
imposes a lattice, which can be exploited to help a reader/browsing user
find just those components of the document that are most important to
them.
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Argument relations