Can Anaphoric Definite Descriptions be Replaced by Pronouns?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Abstract We investigate the hypothesis that a pronoun is used in discourse, when its antecedent is in the focus of the discourse. We create a corpus of ‘replaced anaphoric definite descriptions’, where occurrences of definite descriptions are replaced with a corresponding pronoun. We use the Lappin and Leass (1994) anaphora resolution algorithm on the new corpus, and obtain a much lower performance than when the corpus only contains genuine pronouns, thus supporting the hypothesis.
منابع مشابه
Accent and Description: an account of anaphoric epithets
Definite descriptions, like the pig behave differently in prosodically prominent (2) and non-prominent (1) environments. (I hate Jack but. . .) (1) Mary KISSED the pig. epithet: the pig = Jack (2) Mary kissed the PIG. standard: the pig = Jack In (2) the definite description picks out a uniquely salient pig. In the unaccented environment (1) the definite description the pig is an anaphoric epith...
متن کاملTwo kinds of definites in numeral classifier languages
Numeral classifier languages are shown to distinguish definite noun phrases licensed by uniqeness from those licensed by familiarity. Unique definites are expressed by bare nouns, while familiar definites are expressed by indexicals such as demonstrative descriptions or pronouns. This generalization parallels the observation by Schwarz (2009) that German distinguishes unique versus familiar or ...
متن کاملCorpus-Based Identification of Non-Anaphoric Noun Phrases
Coreference resolution involves finding antecedents for anaphoric discourse entities, such as definite noun phrases. But many definite noun phrases are not anaphoric because their meaning can be understood from general world knowledge (e.g., "the White House" or "the news media"). We have developed a corpus-based algorithm for automatically identifying definite noun phrases that are non-anaphor...
متن کاملDiscourse-New Detectors For Definite Description Resolution: A Survey And A Preliminary Proposal
Vieira and Poesio (2000) proposed an algorithm for definite description (DD) resolution that incorporates a number of heuristics for detecting discoursenew descriptions. The inclusion of such detectors was motivated by the observation that more than 50% of definite descriptions (DDs) in an average corpus are discourse new (Poesio and Vieira, 1998), but whereas the inclusion of detectors for non...
متن کاملUnbound Anaphoric Pronouns: E-Type, Dynamic, and Structured-Propositions Approaches
Unbound anaphoric pronouns or ‘E-type pronouns’ have presented notorious problems for semantic theory, leading to the development of dynamic semantics, where the primary function of a sentence is not considered that of expressing a proposition that may act as the object of propositional attitudes, but rather that of changing the current information state. The older, ‘E-type’ account of unbound ...
متن کامل