The Use of Dynamically Extracted Context for Anaphoric Reference Resolution

We def ine anaphora more broadly than is usua l l y done, i . e . to inc lude not only pronoun, proadverb ( e . g . he re , t h e r e , t hen ) , pro-verb (e .g . do as in John goes to bed e a r l y ; I do t o o . ) , d e f i n i t e , e t c . re fe rence, but a lso i n d e f i n i t e reference (as in 1 below),as w e l l as reference by an e n t i r e sentence or subsentence to a previous sentence or subsentence (as in 2 below). In 1 an extremely i n t e r es t ing tatooed lady is a reference to the c i r c u s , w i t h the intended r e l a t i o n "was performing i n " o r something s i m i l a r ; In 2 My car wou ldn ' t s t a r t is viewed as reference to I was l a t e to work yes te r day w i t h an intended r e l a t i o n which, to sweep the d i r t under the rug , might be termed "cause" , but which in f ac t is f a r more compl icated. An anaphor ic reference in t h i s extended sense is thus an impl ied r e l a t i o n from an i tem (word, phrase, subsentence, sentence) in a tex t to one or more p re v ious l y occur r ing items (word, phrase, subsentence, sentence, group of sentences) in that t e x t . Res o l u t i o n o f anaphora involves the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of the l a t t e r i tem(s) as w e l l as of the r e l a t i o n intended by the wr i te r /speaker . Thus the reso lu t i o n o f a l l instances o f anaphora in a tex t amounts to the determinat ion of t ha t par t of the "meaning" of the t e x t which is more than the c o l l e c t i o n o f the "meanings" o f i t s i n d i v i u d a l sentences taken in i s o l a t i o n .