Special Electives of Comp.Linguistics:
Processing Anaphoric Expressions
Eleni Miltsakaki
AUTH
Fall 2005-Lecture 6
1
Plan for today
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Semantic focusing and the relational hypothesis (cont’d)
“Interpreting pronouns and connectives: Interactions
among focusing, thematic roles and coherence relations”
(R. Stevenson, A. Knott, J. Oberlander and S. McDonald,
2000)
•
Structural vs semantic focusing
“Effects of subordination on referential form and
interpretation”
(Miltsakaki 2002)
2
Review of the focusing hypothesis
• Verbs and connectives have focusing
properties
– The focusing properties of the verb direct
attention to the entity associated with the
endpoint of the described event
– The focusing properties of the connective
depends on its meaning
3
Review of the relational hypothesis
• The referent of a pronoun is determined by the
choice of coherence relation and not what is in
focus.
• RESULT: the thematic role associated with the
endpoint of the eventuality, patient
• PURPOSE: the agent of an event (so this
relation is incompatible with states)
• NARRATIVE: the agent of an event
4
Stevenson et al’s experiment 3
• Same design as experiment 1
• Unambiguous connectives
– Next (NARRATIVE)
– Whereupon (RESULT)
• Action verbs
– Judgment (e.g., criticize)
– Impact (e.g., hit)
• Two thematic role orders
– Agent-Patient
– Patient-Agent
5
Predictions
• Relational hypothesis
– In the “next” condition, the referent of the pronoun will be the
agent because the coherence relation is narrative
• Semantic focusing
– In the “next” condition, the referent of the pronoun will be the first
mentioned entity (?!) because it focuses on the temporal rather
than causal structure of the discourse. Temporal connectives
direct attention to the first mentioned entity.
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Results
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Results
8
Conclusions from Stevenson et al
2000
• Semantic focusing gives the best explanation for the
interpretation of the pronouns.
• When focusing and coherence relation diverge then the
coherence relation remains closely tied to the thematic
role of the pronominal referent
• When possible, people strive to maintain consistency
between focusing, verb semantics, coherence relations
and the interpretation of the pronoun
9
Structural factors?
• Stevenson et al report that although not
directly tested structural factors appeared
to play a role. E.g.,
– references to PATIENT were more frequent
when PATIENT was first mentioned.
– References to first mentioned in the “next”
condition were more frequent in the PATIENTAGENT order
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Structural vs semantic focusing
• (Miltsakaki 2002, 2003)
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Exp. 1: structural and semantic
focusing in English
• Conditions
– Main-main
– Main-subordinate
• Verbs
– Action
• Connectives
– 5 subordinate conjunctions
• although, because, when, while, so that
– 5 adverbials
• however, then, period, as a result, what is more
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Sample stimuli
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Results
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Exp. 2: Structural and semantic
focusing in Greek
• Greek is a pro-drop language
• When 2 entities are in the discourse, strong
pronouns like ‘ekinos’ will pick the less salient
entity of the two (Dimitriadis 1994)
• O Giorgos-j kalese to Gianni-i gia fagito
• #NULL-i/Aftos-i den mporouse na paei giati eihe
douleia
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Design
•
•
•
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Judgement task for felicity
Main-main, main-subordinate conditions
Action verbs (impact)
Two continuations
– NULL
– EKINOS
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Greek connectives
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Sample items
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Predictions
• In the main-main condition, the strong
pronoun version is felicitous
• In the main-subordinate condition, null or
strong can be felicitous depending on
semantic factors, hence no clear overall
preference
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Results
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Conclusions
• Structural focusing is predominant across
main clauses
• Syntactic subordination creates a locality
where other factors (e.g., semantic) are at
work
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Analysis per connective in English
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Analysis per connective in Greek
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Conclusions from analytical results
• Effect of focusing properties of connectives
intrasententially
• Discourse relations?
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