Research

Our research currently revolves around the following topics:

• Argumentation Mining is the automatic search for arguments in text, and the automatic derivation of the argument's structure.
• Coreference Resolution seeks to determine which nominals in a text refer to the same entity. This includes figuring out what pronouns ("she" etc.) refer to.
• Probing the Climate Change Discourses is a set of student activities on using text mining methods on different text genres where CC is discussed.
• Discourse Structure and Discourse Parsing is the theoretical investigation of what makes a text "coherent", and the automatic analysis of such structures.
• Social Media processing deals with the peculiarities of automatically handling text from Twitter and other social media.

Ongoing dissertations

• Xiaoyu Bai is working on the automatic evaluation of students' free-text production and feedback generation in the context of intelligent learning systems.

• Yulia Clausen is examining the role of German tag questions in discourse variability in social media and spoken language.

• Freya Hewett is looking at the role that discourse structure plays in text complexity and is working on text simplification and summarisation for German-language texts.

• René Knaebel is working on applying deep learning to discourse parsing.

• Robin Schäfer is working on the automatic recognition of argumentation structure in Twitter data.

• Mohammad Yeghaneh is working on converting computational corpora analysis to interpretable argumentation mining using natural language processing and deep learning.

• Karolina Zaczynska is examining how conflicts can be identified and analysed in a corpus containing diplomatic speeches at the UN Security Council.

Completed dissertations

• Berfin Aktaş: Variation in Coreference Patterns: Analyses across genres and language modes. 2023. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Peter Bourgonje: Shallow Discourse Parsing for German. 2021. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Wladimir Sidorenko: Sentiment analysis of German Twitter. 2019. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Yulia Grishina: Assessing the applicability of annotation projection methods for coreference relations. 2019. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Andreas Peldszus: Automatic recognition of argumentation structure in short monological text. 2017. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Anastasia Linnik: Coherence and structure in aphasic and non-aphasic discourse. 2017. Degree in Linguistics.

• Oliver Gros: Computergestützte Wissensextraktion aus Befundtexten der Pathologie. 2014. Degree in Computer Science.

• Julia Ritz: Discourse-givenness of noun phrases: Theoretical and computational models. 2013. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Jörn Kreutel: Modellbasierte Entwicklung von Voice User Interfaces. 2010. Degree in Computer Science.

• Christian Chiarcos: Mental salience and grammatical form. 2010. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.

• Christiane Hümmer: Synonyme bei phraseologischen Einheiten - eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung. 2007. Degree in (Computational) Linguistics.