William C. "Bill" Mann (died August 13, 2004, aged 69) was a computer scientist and

computational linguist Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

, the originator of

rhetorical structure theory Rhetorical structure theory (RST) is a theory of text organization that describes relations that hold between parts of text. It was originally developed by William Mann, Sandra Thompson, Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen and others at the Univers ...

(RST) and a president of the

Association for Computational Linguistics The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proce ...

(1987–1988). He is especially well known for his work in

text generation Natural language generation (NLG) is a software process that produces natural language output. A widely cited survey of NLG methods describes NLG as "the subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics that is concerned with the ...

. He received a Ph.D. in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

under Herbert Simon and

Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was an American researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and D ...

. From the mid-1970s until 1990, he was a researcher at the

Information Sciences Institute The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications techn ...

of the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. From 1990 to 1996, he was a consultant with the

Summer Institute of Linguistics SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

, based in

Nairobi Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...

. William C. Mann died on August 13, 2004, after a long struggle with leukemia.

Publications

* William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson, "Rhetorical structure theory: toward a functional theory of text organization", ''Text'' 8:243-281 (1988). * Maite Taboada, William C. Mann, "Applications of Rhetorical Structure Theory", ''Discourse Studies'' 8:3:567-588 (2006)

Notes

Bibliography

* Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, "Remembering Bill Mann", ''Computational Linguistics'' 31:2:161-171

External links

Bibliography of publications and reports by the creators of RST
Natural language processing researchers Carnegie Mellon University alumni 2004 deaths {{DEFAULTSORT:Mann, William