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 University ...

(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 proces ...

(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. In one of the most widely-cited survey of NLG methods, NLG is characterized as "the subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics tha ...

. He received a Ph.D. in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and

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

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

under Herbert Simon and

Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a 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 Department ...

. 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 techno ...

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 C ...

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

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

, based in

Nairobi Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper ha ...

. 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 Carnegie Mellon University alumni 2004 deaths {{DEFAULTSORT:Mann, William