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Indirect anaphora arises when a reference becomes part of the hearer's or
reader's knowledge indirectly rather than by direct mention, as in (1.46):
(1.46) Although the store had only just opened, the food hall was busy and
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there were long queues at the tills.
In (1.46) the noun phrase the store is regarded as antecedent of the indirect
anaphors the food hall and the tills. It can be inferred that the tills make an indirect
reference to the store because it is known that stores have tills and because the
store has already been mentioned. Similarly, the food hall is understood to be part
of the store. The inference may require more specialised /domain' knowledge,
however, and in the example:
(1.47) When Take That broke up, the critics gave Robbie Williams no chance
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of success.
one must know that Robbie Williams was a member of the former pop group Take
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That in order to be able to infer the indirect reference.
The above examples feature relationships such as part-of (1.46) and set mem-
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bership (1.47) between the anaphor and its antecedent. The latter includes the
relationship subset-set between the anaphor and its antecedent as in (1.53) which
are also instances of indirect anaphora. The distinction between direct and indir-
ect anaphora is not clear-cut. Many definite descriptions can serve as examples
of indirect anaphora and the amount of knowledge required to establish the
antecedent may vary depending on whether the relation between the anaphor
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and the antecedent is that of generalisation, specialisation or even synonymy.
In example (1.25), for instance, some of the coreferential links can be established
only on the basis of the knowledge that Roy Keane is Irish or that he is
Manchester United's skipper. Hence some researchers (Vieira and Poesio 2000b)
use the term direct anaphora to refer exclusively to the cases when the definite
description and the antecedent have identical heads.
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ANAPHORA RESOLUTION
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LINGUISTIC FUNDAMENTALS
This book, like most NLP projects, concentrates on anaphors whose ante-
cedents are noun phrases. As already seen, however, even though these are the
most common and best studied types of anaphors, they are not the only ones.
An anaphor can replace/refer to a noun (example (1.31)), verb (1.32) and
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verb phrase (1.33). Also, the antecedent of a demonstrative pronoun or the
antecedent of the personal pronoun it can be a noun phrase, clause (1.55), sen-
tence (1.56), or sequence of sentences (1.57).
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(1.55) Owen tried to help her with something: this made indeed for disorder.
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(1.56) They will probably win the match. That will please my mother.
(1.57) Many years ago their wives quarrelled over some trivial matter, long
forgotten. But one word led to another, and the quarrel developed into a
permanent rupture between them. That's why the two men never visit
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each other's houses.
In some cases, anaphors may have coordinated antecedents - two or more
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noun phrases coordinated by and or other conjunctions. The anaphor in this
case must be plural, even if each of the noun phrases is singular.
(1.58) The cliff rose high above Paul and Clara on their right hand. They
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stood against the tree in the watery silence.
Similarly, a coordinated antecedent can arise when a list of noun phrases is sep-
arated by commas and/or a conjunction.
(1.59) Among the newspaper critics present, at that time unknown to each
other and to James, were three men shortly destined to become the
most celebrated writers of the age - George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett
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and H.G.Wells. They appreciated James's intelligent dialogue... .
Information about the expected/possible distance between the anaphor and the
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closest antecedent is not only interesting from the point of view of theoretical
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ANAPHORA RESOLUTION
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LINGUISTIC FUNDAMENTALS
For practical reasons most pronoun resolution systems restrict their search to
the preceding 2-3 sentences when looking for an antecedent (see Kameyama
1997; Mitkov 1998b). On the other hand, since anaphoric definite noun phrases
may have their antecedents further away, strategies for their resolution have
involved the search of the 10 preceding sentences (Kameyama 1997).
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ANAPHORA RESOLUTION
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LINGUISTIC FUNDAMENTALS
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ANAPHORA RESOLUTION
Often the level of ambiguity in similar examples depends on the semantics of the
verb or other components in the sentence or discourse.
(1.76) Jane informed Mary she was in love.
In this example it is more likely that Jane was in love because if Mary were in love
herself, perhaps she would not have needed to be informed of it.
Similarly,
(1.77) Jane told Mary she was in danger,
is ambiguous whereas in
(1.78) Jane warned Mary she was in danger.
Mary is by far the more probable antecedent because of the semantics of the verb
to warn which focuses on the person being warned (and hence, the danger to the
addressee).
In practice, however, some readings are much more probable than others:
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(1.79) Jane told Sarah she was the nicest person she knew of.
Even though this sentence is theoretically ambiguous (with four different mean-
ings: each she can be either Jane or Sarah), in practice it is much more probable
that Jane would praise somebody else rather than showing off so immodestly;
therefore, Sarah would be the preferred antecedent of the first she. Similarly, Jane
is inevitably the antecedent of the second she, since Jane cannot have 'inside
knowledge' of what Sarah knows.
These examples illustrate that in many cases of ambiguous anaphors there is
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a probable, preferred or default antecedent, which is taken as the correct one
'in the absence of contradicting context or knowledge' (Hirst 1981).
In many cases the preferred reading relies on extralinguistic knowledge such
as
(1.80) Prime Minister Tony Blair had a fruitful meeting with President
Yeltsin. The old man has just recovered from a heart attack.
The antecedent of The old man is most probably President Yeltsin who is known
to be much older than Tony Blair and has poor health at the time of writing.
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LINGUISTIC FUNDAMENTALS
instantiate David Cheshire to the anaphor his instead of Dillard, since one cannot
put one's ear next to one's own head. Therefore, the resolution moment is not
that of the pronoun reading but a later one. Example (1.81) suggests that there is
a distinction between the point when a reader encounters an anaphor and begins
to interpret it {initiation point), and the point when the reader completes the inter-
pretation of the pronoun {completion point). As Sanford and Garrod (1989) note,
the gap between the two points can be almost nil, as in the case when a reader
resolves a pronoun immediately after she/he encounters it. In other cases, the
gap can be extended to the end of the phrase, clause, or sentence in which the
pronoun is included. The problem of delayed resolution is also discussed in
Cristea and Dima (2000).
1.14 Summary
This chapter introduces the linguistic phenomenon of anaphora (the act of point-
ing back to a previously mentioned item) and related phenomena and con-
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cepts. I have shown that anaphora and coreference (the act of referring to the
same referent in the real world) are not the same thing even though important
classes of anaphora involve coreference. I have also outlined the related phe-
nomena of cataphora (backwards anaphora) and deixis (non-textual reference in
a specific situation). The classification of the varieties of anaphora proposed in
this chapter aims to be simple enough for the purpose of Natural Language
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Processing (NLP). 1 have pointed out that nominal anaphora, that is, anaphora
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exhibited by pronouns and lexical noun phrases that refer to noun phrases, is
the most crucial and best understood class in NLP. I have distinguished varieties
of anaphora (i) according to the form of the anaphor {pronominal, lexical noun
phrase, noun, verb, zero anaphora, etc.), (ii) according to the location of the anaphor
and the antecedent {intrasentential as opposed to intersentential), (iii) according to
the inference needed {indirect as opposed to direct) and (iv) according to whether
the anaphor and the antecedent have the same referent in the real world or one
of a similar description {identity-of-reference or identity-of-sense anaphora). Finally,
I have briefly discussed the typical distance between the different varieties of
nominal anaphora and their antecedents, and have alerted the reader to the fact
that anaphors may be ambiguous.
Notes
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