Abstract
Centering theory (Grosz et al., 1995) tries to explain relations among attention, anaphora, and cohesion. It has two theoretical limitations. The first is the lack of a principle behind these discourse phenomena. The second is that the salience of discourse entities has not been quantitatively defined, although it plays a critical role in this theory. Hasida et al. (1995, 1996) propose the meaning game as a more principled model of intentional communication based on game theory, and claim that it can derive centering theory. This claim, however, has not yet been verified on the basis of substantial linguistic data. In this paper, we formulate salience as a measurable quantity in terms of a reference probability. We also formulate preferences subsuming centering theory under this quantitative formulation of salience. The preferences are derived from the meaning game and entail more general predictions than those of conventional centering theory. These formulations overcome the above limitations of centering theory. By following them, we empirically verify our generalization with a large Japanese corpus. The experimental results show that there is positive correlation between the salience (reference probability) of an entity and the simplicity (utility) of a noun phrase which refers to the entity. They also indicate correspondence between the values of expected utility and the ranking of the transition states. These results indicate that our generalization is appropriate.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | PACLIC 19 - Proceedings of the 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation |
| Publication status | Published - 2005 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, PACLIC 19 - Taipei Duration: 2005 Dec 1 → 2005 Dec 3 |
Other
| Other | 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, PACLIC 19 |
|---|---|
| City | Taipei |
| Period | 05/12/1 → 05/12/3 |
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ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Computer Science (miscellaneous)
Cite this
Empirical verification of Meaning-Game-based generalization of centering theory with large Japanese corpus. / Shiramatsu, Shun; Komatani, Kazunori; Miyata, Takashi; Hasida, Kôiti; Okuno, Hiroshi G.
PACLIC 19 - Proceedings of the 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. 2005.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
}
TY - GEN
T1 - Empirical verification of Meaning-Game-based generalization of centering theory with large Japanese corpus
AU - Shiramatsu, Shun
AU - Komatani, Kazunori
AU - Miyata, Takashi
AU - Hasida, Kôiti
AU - Okuno, Hiroshi G.
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Centering theory (Grosz et al., 1995) tries to explain relations among attention, anaphora, and cohesion. It has two theoretical limitations. The first is the lack of a principle behind these discourse phenomena. The second is that the salience of discourse entities has not been quantitatively defined, although it plays a critical role in this theory. Hasida et al. (1995, 1996) propose the meaning game as a more principled model of intentional communication based on game theory, and claim that it can derive centering theory. This claim, however, has not yet been verified on the basis of substantial linguistic data. In this paper, we formulate salience as a measurable quantity in terms of a reference probability. We also formulate preferences subsuming centering theory under this quantitative formulation of salience. The preferences are derived from the meaning game and entail more general predictions than those of conventional centering theory. These formulations overcome the above limitations of centering theory. By following them, we empirically verify our generalization with a large Japanese corpus. The experimental results show that there is positive correlation between the salience (reference probability) of an entity and the simplicity (utility) of a noun phrase which refers to the entity. They also indicate correspondence between the values of expected utility and the ranking of the transition states. These results indicate that our generalization is appropriate.
AB - Centering theory (Grosz et al., 1995) tries to explain relations among attention, anaphora, and cohesion. It has two theoretical limitations. The first is the lack of a principle behind these discourse phenomena. The second is that the salience of discourse entities has not been quantitatively defined, although it plays a critical role in this theory. Hasida et al. (1995, 1996) propose the meaning game as a more principled model of intentional communication based on game theory, and claim that it can derive centering theory. This claim, however, has not yet been verified on the basis of substantial linguistic data. In this paper, we formulate salience as a measurable quantity in terms of a reference probability. We also formulate preferences subsuming centering theory under this quantitative formulation of salience. The preferences are derived from the meaning game and entail more general predictions than those of conventional centering theory. These formulations overcome the above limitations of centering theory. By following them, we empirically verify our generalization with a large Japanese corpus. The experimental results show that there is positive correlation between the salience (reference probability) of an entity and the simplicity (utility) of a noun phrase which refers to the entity. They also indicate correspondence between the values of expected utility and the ranking of the transition states. These results indicate that our generalization is appropriate.
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M3 - Conference contribution
BT - PACLIC 19 - Proceedings of the 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation
ER -