Related papers: Centering theory and the Italian pronominal system
This paper explores the correlation between centering and different forms of pronominal reference in Italian, in particular zeros and overt pronouns in subject position. Such correlations, that I had proposed in earlier work (COLING 90),…
This paper examines the discourse functions that different types of subjects perform in Italian within the centering framework. I build on my previous work (COLING90) that accounted for the alternation of null and strong pronouns in subject…
One of the necessary extensions to the centering model is a mechanism to handle pronouns with intrasentential antecedents. Existing centering models deal only with discourses consisting of simple sentences. It leaves unclear how to delimit…
Centering theory posits a discourse center, a distinguished discourse entity that is the topic of a discourse. A simplified version of this theory is developed in a Dynamic Semantics framework. In the resulting system, the mechanism of…
By strictest interpretation, theories of both centering and intonational meaning fail to predict the existence of pitch accented pronominals. Yet they occur felicitously in spoken discourse. To explain this, I emphasize the dual functions…
Lexical sets contain the words filling an argument slot of a verb, and are in part determined by selectional preferences. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the properties of lexical sets through distributional semantics. We…
In this paper we present a formalization of the centering approach to modeling attentional structure in discourse and use it as the basis for an algorithm to track discourse context and bind pronouns. As described in Grosz, Joshi and…
Based on empirical evidence from a free word order language (German) we propose a fundamental revision of the principles guiding the ordering of discourse entities in the forward-looking centers within the centering model. We claim that…
In languages such as Japanese, the use of {\it zeros}, unexpressed arguments of the verb, in utterances that shift the topic involves a risk that the meaning intended by the speaker may not be transparent to the hearer. However, this…
Distributional semantics has had enormous empirical success in Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science in modeling various semantic phenomena, such as semantic similarity, and distributional models are widely used in…
The main aim of translation is an accurate transfer of meaning so that the result is not only grammatically and lexically correct but also communicatively adequate. This paper stresses the need for discourse analysis the aim of which is to…
Centering was formulated as a model of the relationship between attentional state, the form of referring expressions, and the coherence of an utterance within a discourse segment (Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein, 1986; Grosz, Joshi and…
In this paper we propose a computational treatment of the resolution of zero pronouns in Japanese discourse, using an adaptation of the centering algorithm. We are able to factor language-specific dependencies into one parameter of the…
I present a unified account of interpretation preferences of stressed and unstressed pronouns in discourse. The central intuition is the Complementary Preference Hypothesis that predicts the interpretation preference of a stressed pronoun…
The paper discusses the role of WordNet-based semantic classification in the formalization of constructions, and more specifically in the semantic annotation of schematic fillers, in the Italian Constructicon. We outline how the Italian…
Phonology typically describes speech in terms of discrete signs like features. The field of intonational phonology uses discrete accents to describe intonation and prosody. But, are such representations useful? The results of mimicry…
Pro-drop is commonly seen in many languages, but its discourse motivations have not been well characterized. Inspired by the topic chain theory in Chinese, this study shows how character-verb usage continuity distinguishes dropped pronouns…
Modelling the process that a listener actuates in deriving the words intended by a speaker requires setting a hypothesis on how lexical items are stored in memory. This work aims at developing a system that imitates humans when identifying…
We specify an algorithm that builds up a hierarchy of referential discourse segments from local centering data. The spatial extension and nesting of these discourse segments constrain the reachability of potential antecedents of an…
A recently proposed axiom system for Andr\'e's central translation structures is improved upon. First, one of its axioms turns out to be dependent (derivable from the other axioms). Without this axiom, the axiom system is indeed…