4 Evaluation Table 7: Resolution Rates for Metonymic Noun Phrases 5 Related Work 3 Interaction of Metonymies and Anaphora 2 Conceptual and Semantic Constraints on the Interaction of Metonymies and Anaphora

bination of anaphoric and metonymic inferences is chosen. Another problem with Norvig' s approach relates to the fact that insufficient results from the inference processes do not trigger additional computations in order to try yet another, perhaps not so obvious analysis. If, e.g., for reasons whatsoever no anaphoric inference is found for a definite noun phrase, Norvig' s system does not attempt to find a less favored metonymic reading, which, nevertheless, would allow for a subsequent anaphoric interpretation. In Hobbs et al.' s work the interpretation of a sentence (or a sequence thereof) amounts to proving its logical form. Although this allows, in principle, for the interaction between metonymies and anaphora, this problem is not yet addressed in their work. Therefore, their approach to metonymy resolution is limited to explicitly marked cases of sortal conflicts. Although literal interpretation is regarded as a special case of metonymy resolution, it is preferred when no sortal conflict is encountered, thus actually subscribing to an LMF model. This leads us to our second point of criticism, namely that all computational approaches we know of converge on the assumption (rejected in our approach) that metonymy resolution is entirely dependent on encountering intrasentential anomalies. Usually, this amounts to the requirement that sor-tal conflicts have to be recognized, e. Thus, a metonymic interpretation of a sentence is always rejected in favor of the literal one, regardless of discourse processes, if the literal one does not lead to a deviant sentence reading. Our test set indicates, however, that about one third of the metonymies it contains are not marked by a sortal conflict at all. Hence, further relying on this violation condition precludes a significant range of metonymies from actually being resolved. The pragmatic approaches just discussed fully subscribe to a syntax-first paradigm. The incorporation of their mechanisms for metonymy resolution into an incremental mode is precluded, as they rely on the detection of sortal conflicts. In contradistinction, our predicates in Table 3, 4 and 5 are all compatible with both a syntax-first paradigm and the incre-mental interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 6 Conclusion We have introduced a model of metonymy resolution that is based on the interaction of metonymic and anaphoric resolution processes. Discourse constraints supplied by information about anaphoric antecedents enable us to treat metonymies on a par with literal interpretations. This leads us to a more effective procedure than common LMF models. The empirical …