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Focusing for interpretation of pronouns

Author:

Candace L. SidnerAuthors Info & Claims

Computational Linguistics, Volume 7, Issue 4

Pages 217 - 231

Published: 01 October 1981 Publication History

Abstract

Recent studies in both artificial intelligence and linguistics have demonstrated the need for a theory of the comprehension of anaphoric expressions, a theory that accounts for the role of syntactic and semantic effects, as well as inferential knowledge in explaining how anaphors are understood. In this paper a new approach, based on a theory of the process of focusing on parts of the discourse, is used to explain the interpretation of anaphors. The concept of a speaker's foci is defined, and their use is demonstrated in choosing the interpretations of personal pronouns. The rules for choosing interpretations are stated within a framework that shows: how to control search in inferring by a new method called constraint checking; how to take advantage of syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints on interpretation; and how to generalize the treatment of personal pronouns, to serve as a framework for the theory of interpretation for all anaphors.

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Cited By

Kong FZhou GZhu QKoehn PMihalcea R(2009)Employing the centering theory in pronoun resolution from the semantic perspectiveProceedings of the 2009 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Volume 2 - Volume 210.5555/1699571.1699641(987-996)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1699571.1699641
Ng HZhou YDale RGardiner M(2005)A machine learning approach to identification and resolution of one-anaphoraProceedings of the 19th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence10.5555/1642293.1642470(1105-1110)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1642293.1642470
Yang XSu JZhou GTan CScott D(2004)Improving pronoun resolution by incorporating coreferential information of candidatesProceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/1218955.1218972(127-es)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/1218955.1218972
Show More Cited By

Focusing for interpretation of pronouns
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
2. Hardware
  1. Power and energy
    1. Power estimation and optimization

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cover image Computational Linguistics

Computational Linguistics Volume 7, Issue 4

October-December 1981

59 pages

ISSN:0891-2017

EISSN:1530-9312

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MIT Press

Cambridge, MA, United States

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Published: 01 October 1981

Published in COLI Volume 7, Issue 4

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Cited By

Kong FZhou GZhu QKoehn PMihalcea R(2009)Employing the centering theory in pronoun resolution from the semantic perspectiveProceedings of the 2009 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Volume 2 - Volume 210.5555/1699571.1699641(987-996)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1699571.1699641
Ng HZhou YDale RGardiner M(2005)A machine learning approach to identification and resolution of one-anaphoraProceedings of the 19th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence10.5555/1642293.1642470(1105-1110)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1642293.1642470
Yang XSu JZhou GTan CScott D(2004)Improving pronoun resolution by incorporating coreferential information of candidatesProceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/1218955.1218972(127-es)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/1218955.1218972
Cristea DIde NMarcu DTablan VKay M(2000)An empirical investigation of the relation between discourse structure and co-referenceProceedings of the 18th conference on Computational linguistics - Volume 110.3115/990820.990851(208-214)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2000
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/990820.990851
Ide NCristea DIida H(2000)A hierarchical account of referential accessibilityProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/1075218.1075271(416-424)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2000
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/1075218.1075271
Grosz BGordon P(1999)Conceptions of limited attention and discourse focusComputational Linguistics10.5555/973226.97323325:4(617-624)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/973226.973233
Al-Kofahi KGrom BJackson PBing JJones AGordon T(1999)Anaphora resolution in the extraction of treatment history language from court opinions by partial parsingProceedings of the 7th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law10.1145/323706.323788(138-146)Online publication date: 14-Jun-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/323706.323788
Azzam SHumphreys KGaizauskas RBoitet CWhitelock P(1998)Evaluating a focus-based approach to anaphora resolutionProceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics - Volume 110.3115/980845.980858(74-78)Online publication date: 10-Aug-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/980845.980858
Marcu DCohen PWahlster W(1997)The rhetorical parsing of natural language textsProceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and Eighth Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/976909.979630(96-103)Online publication date: 7-Jul-1997
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/976909.979630
Qu YRosé CDi Eugenio BTsujii J(1996)Using discourse predictions for ambiguity resolutionProceedings of the 16th conference on Computational linguistics - Volume 110.3115/992628.992691(358-363)Online publication date: 5-Aug-1996
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/992628.992691
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