Anaphora and discourse structure

Bonnie Webber; Aravind Joshi; Matthew Stone; Alistair Knott

doi:10.1162/089120103322753347

Anaphora and discourse structure

Bonnie Webber, Aravind Joshi, Matthew Stone, Alistair Knott

School of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article

94 Scopus citations

Abstract

We argue in this article that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure instead work anaphorically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalized grammar for discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution, and inference.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	545-587
Number of pages	43
Journal	Computational Linguistics
Volume	29
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1162/089120103322753347
State	Published - Dec 2003

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All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Computer Science Applications
Artificial Intelligence

Cite this

Webber, B., Joshi, A., Stone, M., & Knott, A. (2003). Anaphora and discourse structure. Computational Linguistics, 29(4), 545-587. https://doi.org/10.1162/089120103322753347

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Access to Document

10.1162/089120103322753347