This book is a study of the category of definiteness in the light of research on mental spaces and frames. The author formulates a set of eight uniform rules for the use of the definite, indefinite, and zero articles in English and German. The Concept of Definiteness presents an algorithm for nominal reference resolution that uses the definiteness value of each noun phrase to guide the search for its referent. The book discusses the results of the application of an automated system based on the proposed algorithm to texts in modern English. It also demonstrates applicability of the selected approach to text fragments representing all major historical variants of the German language.
This is the first full study of how people refer to entities in natural discourse. It contributes to the understanding of both linguistic diversity and the cognitive underpinnings of language and it provides a framework for further research in both fields. Andrej Kibrik focuses on the way specific entities are mentioned in natural discourse, during which about every third word usually depends on referential choice. He considers reference as an overt representation of underlying cognitive processes and combines a theoretically-oriented cognitive approach with empirically-based cross-linguistic analysis. He begins by introducing the cognitive approach to discourse analysis and by examining the relationship between discourse studies and linguistic typology. He discusses reference as a linguistic phenomenon, in connection with the traditional notions of deixis, anaphora, givenness, and topicality, and describes the way his theoretical approach is centered on notions of referent activation in working memory. He argues that the speaker is responsible for the shape of discourse and that referential expressions should be understood as choices made by speakers rather than as puzzles to be solved by addressees. Kibrik examines the cross-linguistic aspects of reference and the typology of referential devices, including referring expressions per se, such as free and bound pronouns, and referential aids that help to tell apart the concurrently activated entities. This discussion is based on the data from about 200 languages from around the world. He then proposes a comprehensive model of referential choice, in which he draws on concepts from cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, and applies this to Russian and English. He also draws together his empirical analyses in order to examine what light his analysis of discourse can shed on the way information is processed in working memory. In the final part of the book Andrej Kibrik offers a wider perspective, including deixis, referential aspects of gesticulation and signed languages. This pioneering work will interest linguists and cognitive scientists interested in discourse, reference, typology, and the operations of working memory in linguistic communication.
This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.
The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäger (History of German indefinite determiners); typological comparison of the interaction of nominal and verbal determination by Abraham (Discourse-functional crystallization of the original demonstrative); Leiss (Covert (in)definiteness and aspect in Old Icelandic, Gothic, Old High German); Lohndal (Double definiteness during Old Norse); emergence of DP in ontogeny/phylogeny by Osawa (DP, TP and aspect in Old English and L1 acquisition); Bittner (Early functions of definites in L1 acquisition); Wood (Demonstratives and possessives emergent from Old English); Bauer ((in)definite articles in Indo-European) and Stark (Variation in nominal indefiniteness in Romance).
This volume contains the papers presented at NLDB 2009, the 14th Inter- tional Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems held June 24–26, 2009, at the University of the Saarland and the German - search Center for Arti?cial Intelligence in Saarbruc ̈ ken, Germany. In addition to reviewed submissions, the program also included contributions to the doctoral symposiumheldduring NLDB2009aswellastwoinvitedtalks.Thesetalksc- ered some of the currently hot topics in the use of natural languagefor accessing information systems. Wereceived51submissionsasregularpapersforthemainconference,2extra submissions as posters, and 3 short papers for the doctoral symposium. Each paper for the main conference was assigned four reviewers, taking into account preferences expressed by the ProgramCommittee members as much as possible. Within the review deadline, we received at least three reviews for almost all submissions. After the review deadline, the Conference Organizing Committee members and the Program Committee Chair acted as meta-reviewers. This task included studying the reviews and the papers, speci?cally those whose assessment made them borderline cases, and discussing con?icting opinions and their impact on theassessmentofindividualpapers.Finally,themeta-reviewerswroteadditional reviews for the few papers which received less than three reviews, as well as for papers which received reviews with considerably con?icting assessments.
The topic of this work is nominal coreference in English and German. Its focus is on coreference relations that establish textual coherence and continuity above the local level of the clause. The book shows how linguistic options for creating coreference in English and German can be interpreted against the background of their motivating factors. It discusses mental text processing, German-English systemic contrasts and register peculiarities as possible sources for variation on different linguistic levels. Hermeneutic and example-based observations are complemented by a corpus-linguistic analysis of English and German political essays and German translations from the English originals. The study finally highlights linguistic and functional correlations of coreference instantiations in English and German texts, additionally shedding light on coreference strategies employed in translations. It thus yields an incentive for future research as well as providing a wealth of insights for language and translation teaching.
Teaching computers to solve language problems is one of the major challenges of natural language processing. There is a large amount of interesting research devoted to this field. This book fills an existing gap in the literature with an up-to-date survey of the field, including the author’s own contributions. A number of different fields overlap in anaphora resolution – computational linguistics, natural language processing (NLP), grammar, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and artificial intelligence. This book begins by introducing basic notions and terminology, moving onto early research methods and approaches, recent developments and applications, and future directions. It addresses various issues related to the practical implementation of anaphora systems, such as rules employed, algorithms implemented or evaluation techniques used. This is an ideal reference book for students and researchers in this particular area of computational linguistics. Since anaphora resolution is vital for the development of any practical NLP system, the book will be of interest to readers from both academia and industry.
