Testing the Limits of Anaphoric Distance in Classical Arabic: a Corpus-Based Study

One of the central aims in research on anaphora is to discover the factors that determine the choice of referential expressions in discourse. Ariel (1988; 2001) offers an Accessibility Scale where referential expressions, including demonstratives, are categorized according to the values of anaphoric (i.e. textual) distance that each of these has in relation to its antecedent. The aim of this paper is to test Ariel’s (1988; 1990; 2001) claim that the choice to use proximal or distal anaphors is mainly determined by anaphoric distance. This claim is investigated in relation to singular demonstratives in a corpus of Classical Arabic (CA) prose texts by using word count to measure anaphoric distance. Results indicate that anaphoric distance cannot be taken as a consistent or reliable determinant of how anaphors are used in CA, and so Ariel’s claim is not supported by the results of this study. This also indicates that the universality of anaphoric distance, as a criterion of accessibility, is defied

La relación entre la causalidad implícita, la memoria de trabajo y la distancia anafórica durante el procesamiento de pronombres en adultos mayores

175 p.En este trabajo se estudió la relación entre la memoria de trabajo (en función de la carga cognitiva concurrente y la distancia anafórica), la causalidad implícita y la edad durante la resolución anafórica pronominal en adultos mayores, específicamente en 90 sujetos desde 50 a 88 años, distribuidos en 3 grupos: adultos medios (50-59 años), adultos mayores jóvenes (60-69 años) y adultos mayores ancianos (70-88 años). Se realizó un análisis intergrupal para verificar la relación de las variables estudiadas con la edad, y luego un análisis intragrupal para verificar la relación de las variables con el desempeño en resolución anafórica. Los resultados del análisis intergrupal indican que la resolución anafórica tiene una fuerte relación con la edad, encontrándose diferencias significativas entre los rangos de 60-69 y 70-88 años. Con respecto a la causalidad implícita, no se observó relación con la edad en estímulos con causalidad tipo 1 ni tipo 2. La carga cognitiva concurrente sí evidenció una relación con la edad, en su condición sin carga (entre los grupos 50-59 y 60-69 años), al igual que la distancia anafórica en la condición de distancia lejana (entre los rangos de edad 60-69 y 70-88). En relación al análisis intragrupal, se encontró una fuerte relación de la causalidad implícita, la carga cognitiva y la distancia con la resolución anafórica en el grupo total, en el grupo de 50-59 y en el grupo de 70-88 años. Los hallazgos demuestran la relación existente entre la causalidad implícita, la carga cognitiva concurrente y la distancia anafórica con el rendimiento en la resolución anafórica de pronombres en adultos, corroborando en alguna medida hallazgos anteriores en sujetos adultos jóvenes (Martínez, 2004). Palabras claves: anáfora pronominal, causalidad implícita, adultos mayores. /ABSTRACT: This study investigated the relationship between the working memory (according the concurrent cognitive load and the anaphoric distance), the implicit causality and the age during pronominal anaphoric resolution in adults, particularly in 90 subjects from 50 to 88 years old, distributed in 3 groups: adults (50-59 years old), seniors (60-69 years old), and elderly (70-88 years old). An intergroup analysis was carried out to verify the relationship between the variables studied with the age, and then an intragroup analysis was done to verify the relationship between the variables with the performance in anaphoric resolution. The intergroup analysis outcomes showed that anaphoric resolution has a strong relationship with age, yielding significant differences between the groups of 60-69 and 70-88 years old. About the implicit causality, no evidence on relationships with the age in both the stimulus of causality type 1 neither type 2 arose. The concurrent cognitive load evidenced a relationship with the age, in its condition without load (between groups of 50-59 and 60-69 years old), like the anaphoric distance in the condition of far distance (between the groups of 60-69 and 70-88 years old). Regarding the intragroup analysis, it was found a strong relationship of the implicit causality, the cognitive load and the distance with the anaphoric resolution in the entire group, the group of 50-59, and the group of 70-88 years old. These findings demonstrate the existence of a relationship between the implicit causality, the concurrent cognitive load and the anaphoric distance with pronominal anaphoric resolution in adults, corroborating previous findings in young adults (Martínez, 2004). Key terms: pronominal anaphora, memory, implicit causality, aging

Activation in Lavukaleve pronouns: oia versus foia

The first part of this paper describes an unusual system of anaphoric reference tracking in Lavukaleve, a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands. Lavukaleve has two demonstrative pronouns which can be used to make anaphoric reference in narratives. One of these demonstrative pronouns is used to make anaphoric reference to a semi-activated participant, and the other to an activated participant. The second part of the paper situates Lavukaleve's activation-based system of reference tracking in a general typology of reference tracking. Other languages which have reference tracking systems based on the cognitive status of the referent are discussed, and the close connection between these and obviation systems is pointed out

Efecto de la memoria de trabajo y la distancia anafórica en el procesamiento de anáforos pronominales en niños con trastorno específico del lenguaje

155 p.Los niños con trastorno específico del lenguaje (TEL) suelen presentar dificultades en diversos aspectos del discurso, tales como en los elementos de cohesión que marcan relaciones entre los textos. Los anáforos pronominales son una entidad discursiva que entregan cohesión y coherencia a un texto. El procesamiento de los anáforos pronominales puede ser afectado por una serie de factores. El propósito de este estudio es justamente identificar algunos de los factores que afectan el procesamiento de los anáforos pronominales en niños con TEL y determinar si existen diferencias entre estos niños y aquellos con desarrollo típico del lenguaje. En una muestra de 63 niños de edades comprendidas entre los 53,05 y 67,18 meses, divididos en 3 grupos, niños con TEL, niños típicos con misma edad cronológica y niños típicos con misma edad lingüística, se estudió el procesamiento de anáforos pronominales, considerando la distancia anafórica y la carga cognitiva como variables independientes. Los resultados indican que los niños con TEL presentan un rendimiento significativamente inferior al de los niños típicos con la misma edad cronológica y similar a los niños con misma edad lingüística. Además, el procesamiento de anáforos pronominales no es afectado por la carga cognitiva sino más bien por la distancia que existe entre el pronombre y su referente.Palabras claves: anáfora pronominal, distancia anafórica, carga cognitiva, trastorno específico del lenguaje./ABSTRACT:Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have difficulties in various aspects of discourse, such as those cohesive elements that mark relations between texts. The pronominal anaphora is a discursive entity that gives cohesion and coherence to a text. Besides, the pronominal anaphora processing can be affected by a number of factors. The purpose of this study is precisely to identify some of the factors that affect the pronominal anaphora processing in children with SLI and identify if there are differences between groups. In a sample of 63 children aged between 53.05 and 67.18 months, divided into 3 groups, children with SLI, typical children with same chronological age and typical children with the same linguistic age, the pronominal anaphora processing was studied considering the anaphoric distance and cognitive load. The results indicate that children with SLI have significantly lower performance than typical children with same chronological age and similar to the children with same linguistic age, additionally the pronominal anaphora processing is not affected by cognitive load but rather by the distance between the pronoun and its referent. Keywords: pronominal anaphora, anaphoric distance, cognitive load, specific language impairmen

Pronominal types and abstract reference in the Danish and Italian DAD corpora

Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Anaphora Resolution (WAR II). Editor: Christer Johansson. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 2 (2008), 63-71. © 2008 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/7129

The Variable Expression of Transitive Subject and Possesor in Wayuunaiki (Guajiro)

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. Mosonyi (1975) describes the Subjective and Objective transitive clauses as focus alternatives. Álvarez (1993) discovered that the O in the Objective clause must be definite. Despite the association of definiteness and focus as a central factors, the usage of the alternatives in discourse has has not received enough attention. I here conclude that the Subjective variant is the pragmatically marked option, whose primary function is to defocus a 3rd person O that is typically inanimate, new and non-topical. This clause type has the effect of retaining its syntactic valency, but expresseing semantically low transitivity. Álvarez (1990) documents possessor ascension as a construction that involves unrestricted noun incorporation. Matera (2001) adds that the possessor of an incorporated noun can only assume the role of transitive object or stative subject. In the present corpus exploration, I conclude that the External Possessor construction is the functionally marked clause, whose function is primarily to defocus a possessed nominal that is typically inalienable, inanimate, and non-topical information. Additionally, whole-part relationships frequently participate in incorporation, while kinship relations do so rarely. These two ways to cross-reference arguments are here interpreted as differential focus assignment on clausal arguments (Dixon & Aikhenvald 1997). They both involve the prefixation of a- referring to the transitive subject and the external possessor. I conclude that in these constructions this prefix has the effect of backgrounding an entity and consequently assigning undivided focus to the subject or the possessor

Event extraction of bacteria biotopes: a knowledge-intensive NLP-based approach

International audienceBackground: Bacteria biotopes cover a wide range of diverse habitats including animal and plant hosts, natural, medical and industrial environments. The high volume of publications in the microbiology domain provides a rich source of up-to-date information on bacteria biotopes. This information, as found in scientific articles, is expressed in natural language and is rarely available in a structured format, such as a database. This information is of great importance for fundamental research and microbiology applications (e.g., medicine, agronomy, food, bioenergy). The automatic extraction of this information from texts will provide a great benefit to the field

Abstract Pronominal Anaphora in Three Registers of English

Identifying the expressions in a text that refer to the same entity, or coreference resolution, is an important problem in natural language processing. Abstract anaphora are distinct from other types of reference because they refer to abstract entities in discourse such as events, facts, and propositions, and their antecedents can have non-nominal phrase structure. Non-nominal antecedents are an interesting challenge in coreference resolution because the pronoun provides little information about the syntactic structure or semantics of the antecedent. A great deal of work in corpus annotation for coreference and coreference resolution has focused on newspaper text, and the goal of this study is to investigate how patterns in the use of abstract pronominal anaphora vary in three text types. I compiled a corpus of newswire text, spontaneous dialog and planned speech and annotated all instances of the pronouns ‘it’, this’, and ‘that’. I also annotated any non-nominal antecedents used with these pronouns. I compared frequencies of these pronouns, their referential functions, and characteristics of their non-nominal antecedents. I found variation in the frequencies of referential functions, the choice of pronoun and its referential function, the grammatical structure of non-nominal antecedents and the difficulty of the annotation task. The results indicate that the range of pronominal reference, pronominal anaphora and non-nominal antecedents in spoken discourse may not be retrievable from even very large collections of newswire texts

"Modal" 'that' as determiner and pronoun: the primacy of the cognitive-interactional dimension

International audienceIn this article, I examine the 'modal' or 'empathetic' (Lyons, 1977: 677) use of the distal (or "non-proximal") determiner/pronoun 'that': namely, where the intended referent may have just been evoked in the immediately prior discourse, but where the distal pronoun 'that', not the 'in-focus' 'it' or the 'activated',proximal 'this' is used. The rationale behind the choice of this particular type of indexical seems to be that the speaker is distancing him/herself from the referent, not wishing to ascribe actuality to it in the way that would be the case if either 'it' or 'this' were used instead. Examination of this particular value of that leads to the hypothesis that the principles underlying the choice of 'that' as opposed to 'this' or 'it' generally are not derived 'objectively', as it were, from their situational use in terms of degrees of proximity of a referent or demonstratum to the speaker or hearer, nor primarily in terms of attention focus. They are, rather, social and cognitive, and play an important interactional role in the construction of discourse