Review of the Literature

As background research for this work, a comprehensive review of the literature concerning textual topic segmentation, and concerning the nature of topics and topic change in spoken dialogue, was performed. Given its prominence within topic segmentation research, the TextTiling algorithm [6] is examined first, followed by a discussion of techniques and research derived from that algorithm. The section then reviews alternative approaches to topic segmentation.

The second half of the review discusses theories of spoken dialogue, with special focus on theories of topic, question-under-discussion, and topic change.