Semantic Approach to Identity in Coreference Resolution Task

It has been recently discussed in linguistics that the notion of identity in the task of coreference resolution is of continuous nature, ranging from “complete” identity to non-identity. The current paper confronts this idea with experimental data for Polish, resulting in a new approach to the notion of identity. It extends the definition of coreference with speaker/recipient relation, believed to be valid for all languages, and explains the near-identity with lexical and conceptual means. The theory is supported with Polish-English examples presenting difficulties in coreference interpretation.