Using relations to interpret anaphora

Abstract

In this paper we present a novel framework for resolving bridging anaphora. The new framework is based on the core set of relations that have been used to describe an entirely different linguistic process, the process of generating a compound noun from two different nouns. We argue that the linguistic processes of compound noun generation and the use of NP anaphora are alike hence have to use the same relational framework. We validated this hypothesis by using human annotators to interpret indirect anaphora from naturally occurring discourses. The annotators were asked to classify the relations between anaphor-antecedent pairs into relation types that have been previously used to describe the relations between a modifier and the head noun of a compound noun. We obtained very encouraging results with a Fleiss’s k value of 0.66 for inter-annotation agreement.