The purpose of this paper is to propose an algorithm of rhetorical structure analysis of Japanese texts with special reference to wordprocessor help texts, which is to be realized in an interactive help system. The model of the rhetorical structure analysis presented in this paper is applicable to 25 texts (118 sentences) extracted from in the help texts accompanying Microsoft Word 2000. Also, several ways of utilizing the rhetorical structure of the help texts in information retrieval and text planning in the course of interaction with the user are proposed, so that it is possible to bring the computer closer to the people and make effective use of the existing resources.
['Noriko Ito', 'Toru Sugimoto', 'Shino Iwashita', 'Ichiro Kobayashi', 'Michio Sugeno']
A model of rhetorical structure analysis of Japanese instructional texts and its application to a smart help system