Coreference

In linguistics, coreference, sometimes written co-reference, occurs when two or more expressions refer to the same person or thing; they have the same referent. For example, in Bill said Alice would arrive soon, and she did, the words Alice and she refer to the same person. Co-reference is often not easy to work out. For example, in Bill said he would come, the word he may or may not refer to Bill. Determining which expressions are coreferences is an important part of analyzing or understanding the meaning, and often requires information from the context, real-world knowledge, such as tendencies of some names to be associated with particular species ("Rover"), kinds of artifacts ("Titanic"), grammatical genders, or other properties. Linguists commonly use indices to notate coreference, as in Bill i said he i would come. Such expressions are said to be coindexed, indicating that they should be interpreted as coreferential. When expressions are coreferential, the first to occur is often a full or descriptive form (for example, an entire personal name, perhaps with a title and role), while later occurrences use shorter forms (for example, just a given name, surname, or pronoun). The earlier occurrence is known as the antecedent and the other is called a proform, anaphor, or reference.…

In linguistics, coreference, sometimes written co-reference, occurs when two or more expressions refer to the same person or thing; they have the same referent. For example, in Bill said Alice would arrive soon, and she did, the words Alice and she refer to the same person. Co-reference is often not easy to work out. For example, in Bill said he would come, the word he may or may not refer to Bill. Determining which expressions are coreferences is an important part of analyzing or understanding the meaning, and often requires information from the context, real-world knowledge, such as tendencies of some names to be associated with particular species ("Rover"), kinds of artifacts ("Titanic"), grammatical genders, or other properties. Linguists commonly use indices to notate coreference, as in Bill i said he i would come. Such expressions are said to be coindexed, indicating that they should be interpreted as coreferential. When expressions are coreferential, the first to occur is often a full or descriptive form (for example, an entire personal name, perhaps with a title and role), while later occurrences use shorter forms (for example, just a given name, surname, or pronoun). The earlier occurrence is known as the antecedent and the other is called a proform, anaphor, or reference. However, pronouns can sometimes refer forward, as in "When she arrived home, Alice went to sleep." In such cases, the coreference is called cataphoric rather than anaphoric. Coreference is important for binding phenomena in the field of syntax. The theory of binding explores the syntactic relationship that exists between coreferential expressions in sentences and texts. ==Types== When exploring coreference, numerous distinctions can be made, e.g. anaphora, cataphora, split antecedents, coreferring noun phrases, etc. Several of these more specific phenomena are illustrated here: Anaphora a. The music i was so loud that it i couldn't be enjoyed. –The anaphor it follows the expression to which it refers (its antecedent). b. Our neighbors i dislike the music. If they i are angry, the cops will show up soon. – The anaphor they follows the expression to which it refers (its antecedent). Cataphora a. If they i are angry about the music, the neighbors i will call the cops. – The cataphor they precedes the expression to which it refers (its postcedent). b. Despite her i difficulty, Wilma i came to understand the point. – The cataphor her precedes the expression to which it refers (its postcedent) Split antecedents a. Carol i told Bob i to attend the party. They i arrived together. – The anaphor they has a split antecedent, referring to both Carol and Bob. b. When Carol i helps Bob i and Bob i helps Carol i , they i can accomplish any task. – The anaphor they has a split antecedent, referring to both Carol and Bob. Coreferring noun phrases a. The project leader i is refusing to help. The jerk i thinks only of himself i . – Coreferring noun phrases, whereby the second noun phrase is a predication over the first. b. Some of our colleagues 1 are going to be supportive. These kinds of people 1 will earn our gratitude. – Coreferring noun phrases, whereby the second noun phrase is a predication over the first. ==Relation to bound variables== Semanticists and logicians sometimes draw a distinction between coreference and what is known as a bound variable. Bound variables occur when the antecedent to the proform is an indefinite quantified expression, e.g. Quantified expressions such as every student and no student are not considered referential. These expressions are grammatically singular but do not pick out single referents in the discourse or real world. Thus, the antecedents to his in these examples are not properly referential, and neither is his. Instead, it is considered a variable that is bound by its antecedent. Its reference varies based upon which of the students in the discourse world is thought of. The existence of bound variables is perhaps more apparent with the following example: This sentence is ambiguous. It can mean that Jack likes his grade but everyone else dislikes Jack's grade; or that no one likes their own grade except Jack. In the first meaning, his is coreferential; in the second, it is a bound variable because its reference varies over the set of all students. Coindex notation is commonly used for both cases. That is, when two or more expressions are coindexed, it does not signal whether one is dealing with coreference or a bound variable (or as in the last example, whether it depends on interpretation). ==See also== ==Notes== ==References== Crystal, D. 1997. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 4th edition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Jurafsky, D. and H. Martin 2000. Speech and language processing: An introduction to natural language processing, computational linguistics, and speech recognition. New Delhi, India: Pearson Education. Portner, P. 2005. What is semantics?: Fundamentals of formal semantics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Radford, A. 2004. English syntax: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Li, Y., P. Musilek, M. Reformat, and L. Wyard-Scott 2009. Identification of pleonastic it using the web . Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 34, 339–389.

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