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Understanding pronominal references to quantified expressions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1998

ELISE H. TURNER
Affiliation:
Computer Science Department, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, USA, e-mail: [email protected]
COLLETTE M. MATTHIAS
Affiliation:
Sanders, A Lockheed Martin Co., PO Box 868, MER15-2403, Nashua, NH 03061, USA, e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Quantified expressions present an interesting case for understanding pronominal reference because the quantifier which appears in the expression affects how the pronoun will be understood. The quantifier determines which sets will be placed in focus and predicts the relation between the sentence containing the quantifier and the following sentence (Moxey and Sanford 1993a). This information is essential to understanding the pronominal reference. In this paper, we discuss how a natural language processing system can take advantage of this information to understand pronominal references to quantified expressions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IRI-9696055. The authors wish to thank Rich Cullingford, Roy Turner, Roger Kibble, James Lawton, Prabha Ramakrishnan, John Phelps and Tom Roper. The authors also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.