Anaphora Resolution Involving Interactive Knowledge Acquisition

Anaphora resolution in current computer-processable controlled natural languages relies mainly on syntactic information, accessibility constraints and the distance of the anaphoric expression to its antecedent. This design decision has the advantage that a text can be processed automatically without any additional ontological knowledge, but it has the disadvantage that the author is severely restricted in using anaphoric expressions while writing a text. I will argue that we can allow for a wider range of anaphoric expressions if we consider the anaphora resolution process as an interactive, machine-guided knowledge acquisition process in cases where no suitable antecedent can be found automatically. This knowledge acquisition process relies on the human author who provides additional terminological information for the anaphora resolution algorithm – if required – while a text is written.