Positing and resolving bridging anaphora in deverba! NPs

@ O @ @ O O O O O O @ O O O 0 O @ @ O @ @ O O @ 0 0 O O @ O O 0 O O O @ O O @ 0 O O O @ Positing and resolving bridging anaphora in deverbal NPs Elena Not, Lucia M. Tovena, Massimo Zancanaro IRST, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, 1-380.50 Povo TN, ITALY. Fax: +39 (461) 302040 { not [ tovena [ zancana}~i~'st.itc.it Abstract This paper explores the idqa that the operations of positing and resolving bridging anaphora in NPs with deverbal heads can be successfully guided by considering as possible implicit relations those sug- gested by the argument structures of the correspond- ing verbs. We exploit the event/result reading dis- tinction, combined with other aspeetual informa- tion. From there, we work out the idea that there is one particular argument, termed the faeourite, that plays a key role in correctly situating the NP referent within the discourse. I Introduction This paper explores the idea that the operations of positing and resolving bridging anaphom in NPs with deverbal heads can be successfully guided by considering as possible implicit relations those sug- gested by the argument structures of the correspond- ink verbs. Bridging is a referential phenomenon occurring when the referent of ~t linguistic expression can be determined only by recovering a meaningful implicit relation with an already mentioned entity or event. For example, in the following Italian sentences, the correct interpretation for richieste requires the iden- tification of the implidt relation between the set of requests for underwriting and the bond to be under- written. ex. Un nuovo prestito obbli~izionor~o al tasso del 7% e della durata di ire anni verrk emesso domani dal Banco Ambroveneto, .... Le r/chiate verranno accettste dal 2 al 14 ottobre. [A new bond Ioan...will be ~ued tomorrow by Banco Ambroveneto ..... The requests will he accepted from the 2nd to the 14th of October.] The literature describes two basic approaches to deal with bridging in CL: the first consists in work- ing mostly at the semantic level interpreting bridg- ing as a kind of implicature the reader draws to support the coherence of discourse (Asher and Las- carides, 1998, pp.l-2). The s~cond, exemplified by (BOS, Buitelaar, and Mineur, 1995), relies primarily on augmenting the lexicon annotating for each noun its possible meaningful relations. We believe that, at least for the particular kind of bridging we are con- cerned with, the second approach is most promising given that, in some cases, a limited amount of lex- icon annotation can greatly enhance resolution ef- ficiency and efficacy: by using algorithms and rules relying on linguistic information we can significantly constrain inference on cognitive processing. Our contribution goes along the lines proposed in (Grc~ and Sidner, 1998). We are interested in deverbal nouns (e.g. ~build- inK" derived from %o build", and "request" derived from "to request ") and we endorse the claim that bridging occurring in NPs with a …

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