Segmented discourse representation theory (SDRT) is like playing with Legos to make a story. Imagine you have a bunch of little colored blocks, and you want to build a castle. You start by making the base with some green blocks, then you add the walls with some yellow blocks, and then you top it off with some blue blocks to make the roof.
In the same way, SDRT is a method for building stories by breaking them down into small pieces, or "segments". Each segment contains a little bit of information that helps us understand the overall story. For example, one segment might be about a person walking down the street, while another segment might be about a bird flying overhead.
But just like with Legos, it's not enough to have individual pieces - we also need to put them together in the right order. In SDRT, we use "relations" between segments to create a coherent story. These relations tell us how one segment relates to another - for example, we might say that the segment about the person walking down the street is "caused by" the segment about the bird flying overhead.
By putting these segments and relations together, we can create a detailed representation of a story. And just like with Legos, we can take it apart and rebuild it in different ways, depending on what we want to focus on or what additional information we want to include.
Overall, SDRT is a method for analyzing and understanding stories by breaking them down into small pieces, and then putting those pieces together in a meaningful way. With SDRT, we can build any kind of story we want - from a simple tale about a bird and a person, to a complex narrative about love, loss, and redemption.