15 research outputs found
Empirical Verification of Meaning-Game-based Generalization of Centering Theory with Large Japanese Corpus
PACLIC 19 / Taipei, taiwan / December 1-3, 200
Centering, Anaphora Resolution, and Discourse Structure
Centering was formulated as a model of the relationship between attentional
state, the form of referring expressions, and the coherence of an utterance
within a discourse segment (Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein, 1986; Grosz, Joshi and
Weinstein, 1995). In this chapter, I argue that the restriction of centering to
operating within a discourse segment should be abandoned in order to integrate
centering with a model of global discourse structure. The within-segment
restriction causes three problems. The first problem is that centers are often
continued over discourse segment boundaries with pronominal referring
expressions whose form is identical to those that occur within a discourse
segment. The second problem is that recent work has shown that listeners
perceive segment boundaries at various levels of granularity. If centering
models a universal processing phenomenon, it is implausible that each listener
is using a different centering algorithm.The third issue is that even for
utterances within a discourse segment, there are strong contrasts between
utterances whose adjacent utterance within a segment is hierarchically recent
and those whose adjacent utterance within a segment is linearly recent. This
chapter argues that these problems can be eliminated by replacing Grosz and
Sidner's stack model of attentional state with an alternate model, the cache
model. I show how the cache model is easily integrated with the centering
algorithm, and provide several types of data from naturally occurring
discourses that support the proposed integrated model. Future work should
provide additional support for these claims with an examination of a larger
corpus of naturally occurring discourses.Comment: 35 pages, uses elsart12, lingmacros, named, psfi
L'ACCESSIBILITÉ COGNITIVE DES RÉFÉRENTS, LE CENTRAGE D'ATTENTION, ET LA STRUCTURATION DU DISCOURS : UNE VUE D'ENSEMBLE
International audienceCet article constitue une vue d'ensemble critique de la théorie du " Centrage d'attention ", relativement peu connue à ce jour en France. Il commence par présenter la théorie du Centrage d'attention en tant que telle (section 2), puis envisage un certain nombre d'expérimentations destinées à vérifier la réalité psychologique du mécanisme de traitement des unités minimales de discours qu'elle postule (section 3). L'article se termine par un bilan critique de ce modèle (section 4)
Third person pronoun forms in Estonian in the light of centering theory
This paper explains the distinctions between the Estonian 3rd person overt pronoun and the zero person marker in spoken narratives. As both forms express the most salient entities in discourse, the saliency criterion cannot distinguish them. The Centering Theory is used to explore if the overt pronoun and zero have different effects on discourse coherence, i.e. whether there is a difference between transition types relating to zero and those signaling the overt pronoun. Additionally, factors such as grammatical role, case and clause type affecting the choice of pronominal forms are studied to supplement results from the Centering analysis. It is hypothesized that the use of the zero form connects to the CONTINUE transition, while the overt pronoun combines with other Centering- based transition types as well. Furthermore, results show that the zero form is more restricted in its usage contexts and signals mainly nominative subjects in main clauses, while the overt form can appear more widely in different linguistic environments
Empirical Studies in Discourse
Introduction Computationaltheories of discourse are concerned with the context-based interpretation or generation of discourse phenomena in text and dialogue. In the past, research in this area focused on specifying the mechanismsunderlying particular discourse phenomena; the models proposed were often motivated by a few constructed examples. While this approach led to many theoretical advances, models developed in this manner are difficult to evaluate because it is hard to tell whether they generalize beyond the particular examples used to motivate them. Recently however the field has turned to issues of robustness and the coverage of theories of particular phenomena with respect to specific types of data. This new empirical focus is supported by several recent advances: an increasing theoretical consensus on discourse models; a large amount of online dialogue and textual corpora available; and improvements in component technologies and tools for building and testing discours