We take a novel approach to zero pronoun resolution in Chinese: our model explicitly tracks the flow of focus in a discourse. Our approach, which generalizes to deictic references, is not reliant on the presence of overt noun phrase antecedents to resolve to, and allows us to address the large percentage of “non-anaphoric” pronouns filtered out in other approaches. We furthermore train our mode...

In this paper, we present a cognitive model that simulates the processing of subject pronouns in Italian. The model is implemented in the cognitive architecture ACT-R and uses hierarchically ranked constraints to select the most likely referent of a pronoun. When this model is combined with a measure of accessibility in discourse and a processing time limit imposed by the speed of natural langu...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CHAPTER I: SYNTAX AS A PROJECTION OF THE LEXICON 1. The core-semantic relations and their syntactic realization 2. Adjunct-semantic relations and their syntactic realization Footnotes to Chapter I CHAPTER II: EXTERNAL-ARGUMENTS: ARGUMENTAND ADJUNCT-SUBJECTS 1. Control and Raising Verbs: Some differences 1. The distribution of expletives and idioms 2. The distribution of the pro...

Pronoun interpretation in English has been demonstrated to be sensitive to an interaction between grammatical and pragmatically-driven factors. This study investigated the interpretation of pronouns in Japanese, which has both null and overt forms. Thirty-two native speakers of Japanese per experiment participated in passage completion studies with transfer-of-possession contexts (Experiment 1)...

The Turkish reflexive kendisi (self-3SG.POSS) deviates from Principle A of the Binding Theory and Minimalist movement approaches to referential dependencies. This paper concurs with Kornfilt (2001) provides further support that kendi-si is preceded by a null possessor (pro) which influences its binding but argues not reflexive. Kendisi’s distribution changes when pronominal or an overt (o, ‘she...

The paper presents an information extraction system that takes input from Hindi texts and improves the information content retrieved by using anaphor/pronoun resolution mechanism. The information extraction system developed consists of three major modules: The language Parser, Resolution System and Information Extractor. The language parser used is HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar) ba...

This paper investigates the causes of the comparatively low success rates in finding the antecedents of plural pronouns as compared to finding antecedents of singular pronouns. We are trying to show experimentally that considering morphological agreement as a strong constraint in pronoun resolution results in the erroneous interpretation of almost a quarter of the plural pronouns. The work is b...

The clinical case presentation is an important mode of professional communication as well academic genre in medical education. Examining both students' and experienced doctors' linguistic practices can reveal how students differ their underlying knowledge, interpretation execution the that mark novice status. In this paper, we describe differences use theme initiating sentences presentations pr...

In this paper, I give an account, in terms of centering theory (GJW86), of some phenomena of pronominalization in Italian, in particular the use of the null or the overt pronoun in subject position. After a general introduction to the Italian pronominal system, I will review centering, and then show how the original rules given in (GJW86) have to be extended or modified. Finally, I will show th...

This paper investigates to what extent child second language (L2) acquisition is similar to first language (L1) acquisition. The focus is on the nature of root infinitives (RIs) produced by children, namely root declarative clauses whose main verb is either a past participle or an infinitive, whereas a finite form is required in the target language (e.g. papa partir 'daddy leave-INF' instead of...