In this paper, we describe a method for automatic acquisition of script knowledge from a Japanese text collection. Script knowledge represents a typical sequence of actions that occur in a particular situation. We extracted sequences (pairs) of actions occurring in time order from a Japanese text collection and then chose those that were typical of certain situations by ranking these sequences (pairs) in terms of the frequency of their occurrence. To extract sequences of actions occurring in time order, we constructed a text collection in which texts describing facts relating to a similar situation were clustered together and arranged.
