Discourse coherence and pronoun resolution
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper used self-paced reading to test processing preferences in pronoun interpretation in English two clause sentences. The results demonstrate that people’s preferences can be reversed by changing the coherence relation between the clauses. The results are not compatible with the existence of a single all-purpose strategy in pronoun resolution. Rather, the results support Kehler’s (2002) hypothesis that the processing patterns observed in pronoun processing are a byproduct of more general cognitive inference processes underlying the establishment of coherence, such that discourse coherence guides pronoun reference, and pronoun reference guides discourse coherence.
منابع مشابه
Coreference-inspired Coherence Modeling
Research on coreference resolution and summarization has modeled the way entities are realized as concrete phrases in discourse. In particular there exist models of the noun phrase syntax used for discourse-new versus discourse-old referents, and models describing the likely distance between a pronoun and its antecedent. However, models of discourse coherence, as applied to information ordering...
متن کاملRAFT/RAPR and Centering: A Comparison and Discussion of Problems Related to Processing Complex Sentences
Several researchers have noted the local coherence exhibited by discourse (Sidner 1979; Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein 1983; Carter 1987; etc.). A primary component of this local coherence is the way the local focus of the discourse shifts from one sentence to the next and the way this shifting is marked by linguistic choices made by the writer/speaker. By local focus, we refer to that concept a s...
متن کاملPronoun Interpretation as a Side Effect of Discourse Coherence
Recent story completion studies (Arnold 2001, Rohde et al. 2006) show that passages exhibiting different coherence relations yield different patterns of pronoun interpretation. These results predict that a shift in the distribution of coherence relations in participant responses ought to induce a shift in the distribution of pronoun interpretations. Experiment 1 manipulates the coherence distri...
متن کاملDiscourse Segment and Japanese Referring Expressions: Are These Bare NPs or Proper Names ?
Forms of Japanese referring expressions are mainly divided into four types: bare NPs, demonstrative NPs (i.e. either as determiner or as pronoun) and zero pronouns. Out of the four types of the referring expressions, bare NPs are the most common type as a subsequent mention and zero pronouns are used only in limited conditions. Based on the centering framework, the results suggest that the cent...
متن کاملPronominalization and discourse coherence, discourse structure and pronoun interpretation.
Two self-paced reading-time experiments are reported that examine the time course of pronoun interpretation processes based on local discourse structure and on world knowledge. The characterization of local discourse structure is based on recent work on centering, which provides a specific formulation of how the ways in which sentences make reference to common entities determines the coherence ...
متن کامل