Some naive examples turning a monologue into a dialogue. I took examples from the above RST site and inserted questions between the different rhetorical elements. The result is quite natural. In fact, in some text you may see such questions explicitly stated as part of the monologue. It even makes the text easier to read. I wonder if someone hasn't already proposed using questions instead of relations to structure a monologue a la RST.
Bouquets in a basket - with living flowers
2) There is a gardening revolution going on.
What kind of revolution?
3) People are planting flower baskets with living plants,
What kind of plants?
4) mixing many types in one container for a full summer of floral beauty.
How do I do this?
5) To create your own "Victorian" bouquet of flowers,
6) choose varying shapes, sizes and forms, besides a variety of complementary
colors.
How do I arrange the flowers?
7) Plants that grow tall should be surrounded by smaller ones and filled with others that tumble over the side of a hanging basket.
What other aspects are important?
8) Leaf textures and colors will also be important.
What kind of leaf textures and colors are there?
9) There is the silver-white foliage of dusty miller, the feathery threads of lotus vine floating down from above, the deep greens, or chartreuse, even the widely varied foliage colors of the coleus.
The Zero Population Growth Text
4) At 7:00 a.m. on October 25, our phones started to ring.
5) Calls jammed our switchboard all day.
6A) Staffers stayed late into the night,
What did they do?
6B) answering questions
6C) and talking with reporters from newspapers, radio stations, wire services
and TV stations in every part of the country.
Why did so many people call?
7A) When we released the results of ZPG's 1985 Urban Stress Test,
7B) we had no idea we'd get such an overwhelming response.
8) Media and public reaction has been nothing short of incredible!
What kind of people called you?
9) At first, the deluge of calls came mostly from reporters eager to tell the
public about Urban Stress Test results and from outraged public officials who
were furious that we had "blown the whistle" on conditions in their cities.
10) Now we are hearing from concerned citizens in all parts of the country who
want to know what they can do to hold local officials accountable for tackling
population-related problems that threaten public health and well-being.
What the heck is this Urban Stress Test then?
11A) ZPG's 1985 Urban Stress Test,
11B) created after months of persistent and exhaustive research,
11A) is the nation's first survey of how population-linked pressures affect
U.S. cities.
What kind of data did the test evaluate?
12) It ranks 184 urban areas on 11 different criteria ranging from crowding and birth rates to air quality and toxic wastes.
What is the significance of the test?
13) The Urban Stress Test translates complex, technical data into an
easy-to-use action tool for concerned citizens, elected officials and opinion
leaders.
14A) But to use it well,
14B) we urgently need your help.
Why do you need my help?
15A) Our small staff is being swamped with requests for more information
15B) and our modest resources are being stretched to the limit.
16) Your support now is critical.
Why?
17) ZPG's 1985 Urban Stress Test may be our best opportunity ever to get the population message heard.
What are you going to do with my contribution?
18) With your contribution, ZPG can arm our growing network of local activists with the materials they need to warn community leaders about emerging population-linked stresses before they reach crisis stage.
Why local activists?
19A) Even though our national government continues to ignore the consequences
of uncontrolled population growth,
19B) we can act to take positive action at the local level.
Do local authorities have much influence then?
20) Every day decisions are being made by local officials in our communities that could drastically affect the quality of our lives.
So where do you come in?
21A). To make sound choices in planning for people,
21B) both elected officials and the American public need the population-stress
data revealed by our study.
22) Please make a special contribution to Zero Population Growth today.
What kind of contribution?
23). Whatever you give -- $25, $50, $100 or as much as you can -- will be used immediately to put the Urban Stress Test in the hands of those who need it most.
Our intention is however to use RST-like structuring theories for dialogue. One way is to use the RST structure of a text as a set of expectations for what a user may ask. Another is to use a RST analysis method for analysing a dialogue.
Suppose that, as an alternative to a QA corpus, we annotate a text with questions as we have done above. We also create a hierarchical structure between the DRT elements of the text. When we present a DRT element to the user, starting with the top element, there is a specific set of questions that the user can ask which the system can very easily answer. In fact, if our text is well written for a specific audience (i.e. answering the most frequently asked questions!) the RST structure is a direct guideline for anyone wanting to know something about the topic that the text addresses. The guideline will be very rigid, but it's a start. It does enable a system to answer highly contextualised questions with high accuracy.