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Anaphoric reference resolution

Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova

Hauptseminar. Computerlinguistik, 2. Studienabschnitt
Geb. 17.2, Konferenzraum 2.11, Freitag 11-13, unless stated otherwise

Schedule

8.11.
Introduction: What is anaphoric reference.
  • Required reading: (Jurafsky et al. 2000 :Chapter 18 [22])
  • Further interest: (Webber 1983 [40])

15.11.
Introduction to Anaphoric Reference Annotation: MMAX tool
  • Required reading:
    • annotation manual [41];
    • MMAX description (Strube et al. 2001a [31])
  • Homework: first annotation task (see ``Annotation''; deadline extended to: 1.12.)

22.11.
Discussion of first annotation; Annotation and annotation-evaluation methodolody
  • Reading:
    • measuring reliability by $ \kappa$ statistic (Carletta 1996 [6]);
    • application of $ \kappa$ statistic to coreference (Passoneau 1997 [33]);
    • evaluation of inter-annotator agreement in MUC (Hirschman et al. 1997; [17])
  • We did not get to talk about other anaphora annotation schemes and proposed standards:
    • DRAMA (Passoneau 1996 [32]):
    • MUC-6 and MUC-7 Coreference Specification(s) (MUCCS)
    • Discourse Resource Initiative workshop on standards (Carletta et al. 1997 [7])
    • MATE project deliverable: URL
  • Homework: second annotation task (postponed)

29.11.
no seminar, because of the Siridus project review meeting

6.12.
no seminar, because of illness

13.12.
Syntactic search vs. semantic approach to anaphora resolution
Presenter: Oezguer Demir
Slides
Literature:
  • Required reading: (Hobbs 1978/1986 [18]); generalization of the syntactic approach in (Stuckardt 2001; URL)
  • Further interest: coreference as a by-product of establishing coherence (Hobbs 1979 [19]); discourse interpretation as abduction in TACITUS (Hobbs et al. 1993 [21])

20.12.
Centering Theory I: basic approach, problems
Presenter: Alexander Schutz
Questions
Literature:
  • Required reading:
    • CT formulation (Grosz et al. 1995 [9]);
    • applying CT to pronoun resolution (Brennan et al. 1987 [4]);
    • Discussion of two problems for CT (Kehler 1997 [27]); remedy for one of them will be discussed later (Strube 1998 [36]);
  • Further interest:
    • Evaluation of centering-based approaches to anaphora resolution (Tetrault 2001 [49]
    • About the original intuitions behind CT (Grosz & Sidner 1995, [11]); work that preceded the formulation of CT (Grosz 1977 [10]); (Sidner 1983 [35])

10.1.
Centering Theory II: other versions, application to other languages, modifications
Presenter: Kepa Rodriguez
Slides     Questions
Literature:
  • Required reading:
    • ``functional centering'' modification of CT for reference resolution in German (Strube and Hahn 1999 [37], this is a revised version of Hahn and Strube 1997 [13])
    • Selected paper(s) from (Walker et al. 1998 [39]) --in particular, look what proposals for CT modification have been made in order to deal with reference phenomena in other languages

make-up session: 15.1., 16-18, 17.2:2.11
Information status, salience/activation-based reference resolution
Presenter: Vašek Nemcík
Slides     Questions
Literature:
  • Reading: incremental centering/salience-based reference resolution (Strube 1998 [36]);
  • Further interest:
    • Other salience-based algorithms: using information structure (Hajicova 1993 [15]) using semantic factors in CAPTURE (Alshawi 1987 [1]), using syntactic factors in RAP (Lappin and Leass 1994 [30])
    • IStat taxonomies (Prince 1981 [34]), (Hajicova 1993 [15], Hajicova et al. [16]); (Gundel et al. 1993 [12]); (Sidner 1983 [35]); comparison of Sidner/McKeown's ``focussing'' models and Hajicova's salience modelling (Hajicova 1987 [14]), comparison of Centering and Hajicova's salience-based model (Korbayova & Hajicova 1997 [29])

17.1.
Parallellism effects, parallellism in pronoun and ellipsis resolution
Presenter: Iris Kersten
Slides     Questions
Literature:
  • Required reading: (Kameyama 1986 [23]);
  • Further interest:
    • parallellism-based treatment of zero-pronouns in Japanese (Kameyama 1988 [24]);
    • formalization of parallellism in discourse (Kehler 1993a [25], Kehler 1993b [26], Hobbs and Kehler 1997 [20])

make-up session: 22.1., 16-18, 17.2:2.11
Combination of criteria for robust anaphora resolution, comparison/evaluation of algorithms
Presenter: Kepa Rodriguez
Questions
Literature:
  • Required reading:
    • Combining different criteria using weights: (Lappin & Leass, 1994 [30])
    • Separate high-precision resolution with different criteria: (Baldwin 1995 [42], 1997 [2])
  • Further interest:
    • (Kennedy & Boguraev 1996 [28]): a modification and extension of (Lappin and Leass 1994) which does not work off a full syntactic parse
    • (Preiss 2002b [44]) a comparison of (Lappin and Leass 1994) with a probabilistic approach presented in (Ge et al. 1998 [45] ; Ge and Charniak to appear [46] )
    • Introduction to and selected papers from Special issue of the Journal of computational linguistics on Computational approaches to anaphora resolution URL
    • An architecture for comparing various approaches to anaphora resolution (Byron and Tetrault 1999 [48])

    • 24.1.
    Machine learning approaches
    Presenter: Oezguer Demir
    Questions
    Literature:
    • Required reading: (Soon, Ng, Lim 2001; URL); To get a quick overview of the approach, one can also look at the predecessor and much shorter paper (Soon, Ng, Lim 1999; URL)
    • Further interest:
      • (Preiss 2001; URL)
      • (Strube et al 2002, ACL; URL)
      • Special issue of the Journal of computational linguistics on Computational approaches to anaphora resolution URL

    31.1.
    Nominal anaphora
    Presenter: Vašek Nemcík
    Slides     Questions
    Literature:
    • Required reading: (Vieira and Poesio 2000 [38a])
    • Further interest:

    7.2.
    Abstract-entity anaphora
    Presenter: Alexander Schutz
    Slides     Questions
    Literature:
    • Required reading:
      • (Byron 2002 [52])
    • Further interest:
      • Abstract entities in discourse: (Webber 1991 [51])
      • Non-(pro)nominal anaphora in discourse: various papers by Webber et al.; D-LTAG project
      • Discourse structure stuff: Schilder; Marcu, etc.

    14.2.
    Reference in multimodal contexts in dialogue
    Presenter: Iris Kersten
    Questions
    Literature:
    • (Eckert and Strube 2001 [8])
    • Bielefeld group (Project in SFB360 [link]): investigation of deictic reference in instructional dialogues, cf. P. Kühnlein "Gesture during Dialogue" (1999) [get paper]
    • Integrating the interpretation of linguistic expressions and gestures: Michael Johnston; Philip R. Cohen; David McGee; Sharon L. Oviatt; James A. Pittman; Ira Smith "Unification-based Multimodal Integration" (1997, ACL) [PDF]
    • Prof. Wahlster's group at DFKI: SmartKom project

    21.2.
    Wrap-up and follow-up