The language of explanation dedicated to technical documents

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a study of explanations as they appear in technical documents, in particular procedures where they are crucial. Our study is based on an extensive corpus analysis. We introduce the notion of explanation function, serving communication goals, and then explanation schemes which are the language realizations of the functions. We give some details about linguistic patterns that allow for the identification of these various schemes.

Keywords

• text semantics
• explanation
• procedures
• linguistic patterns