We propose an annotation framework to explicitly identify dropped subject pronouns in Chinese. We acknowledge and specify 10 concrete pronouns that exist as words in Chinese and 4 abstract pronouns that do not correspond to Chinese words, but that are recognized conceptually, to native Chinese speakers. These abstract pronouns are identified as “unspecified”, “pleonastic”, “event”, and “existen...

Personal pronouns have been shown to influence cognitive perspective taking during comprehension. Studies using single sentences found that 3rd person pronouns facilitate the construction of a mental model from an observer's perspective, whereas 2nd person pronouns support an actor's perspective. The direction of the effect for 1st person pronouns seems to depend on the situational context. In ...

In this paper we describe the results of unsupervised (clustering) and supervised (classification) learning experiments with the purpose of recognising the function of singular neuter pronouns in Danish corpora of written and spoken language. Danish singular neuter pronouns comprise personal and demonstrative pronouns. They are very frequent and have many functions such as non-referential, cata...

This paper presents an exploratory study on the usage of epicene pronouns in speech Chinese EL2 students, who were undertaking a Master’s programme UK. The reasons for speakers’ use or non-use is also explored to provide fuller picture as well their perceptions gender-inclusive pronouns. An elicitation based speaking task was used gather pronoun usage. followed by semi-structured interview util...

Pronouns are frequently dropped in Chinese sentences, especially in informal data such as text messages. In this work we propose a solution to recover dropped pronouns in SMS data. We manually annotate dropped pronouns in 684 SMS files and apply machine learning algorithms to recover them, leveraging lexical, contextual and syntactic information as features. We believe this is the first work on...

Coreference resolution plays a critical role in discourse analysis. This paper focuses on exploiting zero pronouns to improve Chinese coreference resolution. In particular, a simplified semantic role labeling framework is proposed to identify clauses and to detect zero pronouns effectively, and two effective methods (refining syntactic parser and refining learning example generation) are employ...

Previous studies have suggested that ambiguous null pronouns are biased to co-refer with topical subject antecedents. In Italian, for example, Belletti, Bennati & Sorace (2007) (henceforth BB&S) suggested that null subject pronouns typically co-refer with already established topic antecedents ([topic shift]), whereas overt subject pronouns signal a change in topic ([+topic shift]). This discour...

Anaphora resolution attempts to determine the correct antecedent of an anaphor (the term pointing back). In what follows, we propose an algorithm for the resolution of anaphoric pronouns that relies on lexical and syntactic knowledge incorporated in a modular approach based on constraints and preferences. Our objective was to find the correct antecedent to the following subject pronouns (il, il...

Four experimental studies were designed to test, in Norwegian, the hypothesis that children’s nonadultlike interpretations of pronouns may be partly attributable to a lexical factor interacting with the A-Chain Condition (Philip and Coopmans (1996), Sigurjónsdóttir and Coopmans (1996)). Analyzing the antisubject orientation of pronouns in adult Norwegian as an A-Chain Condition effect at Logica...

Children acquiring their native language (L1) have been reported to have greater difficulty in interpreting pronouns than reflexives. In addition, they are less accurate when pronouns refer to referential antecedents than to quantified antecedents, and when they hear full pronouns as opposed to reduced pronouns. We hypothesize that similar difficulties of interpretation will occur for (non-adva...