Evaluating importance: a step towards text summarization

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of evaluation importance of descriptive texts and proposes a procedural, rule-based approach which is implemented in a prototype experimental of System operating in the specific domain of text summarization. Importance evaluation is performed through a set of rules wich are used to assign importance values to the different parts of a text and to resolve or explain conflicting evaluations. The system utilizes world knowledge on the subject domain contained in an encylopedia and takes into accont a goal assigned by the user for specifying the pragmatic aspects of the understading activity. In the paper some examples of the system operation are presented by following the evaluation of a small sample text.