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Which Bridges for Bridging Definite Descriptions?

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Which Bridges for Bridging Definite Descriptions? Which bridges for bridging definite descriptions? Claire Gardent, Hélène Manuélian and Eric Kow LORIA BP239 Campus Scientifique F-54506 Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy [email protected] Abstract Note that the implicit relation must be supported by shared knowledge. This is illustrated by example This paper presents a corpus study of (1b) where no relation between “duck” and the en- bridging definite descriptions in the french tities previously mentioned can be inferred. As a corpus PAROLE. It proposes a typology result, no anchor can be provided for the definite of bridging relations; describes a system description (“the duck” is not interpreted as “the for annotating NPs which allows for a duck that is part of the room”) and the overall dis- user friendly collection of all relevant in- course is distinctly odd. formation on the bridging definite des- For natural language processing systems, so-ca- criptions occurring in the corpus and dis- lled “bridging” (or “associative”) definite descrip- cusses the results of the corpus study 1. tions raise the interesting issue of how to integrate knowledge based reasoning so as to correctly in- 1 Introduction terpret or generate them. In the analysis direction, the problem is to recover the missing relation bet- It has long been known (cf. e.g., (Clark, 1977)) ween antecedent and anaphor so as to provide a that the referent of a definite description can be full interpretation of the input text (assuming the implicitely related (through world or lexical know- antecedent has somehow been identified). In the ledge) to some previously mentioned entity. In (1a) generation process, the difficulty is to determine for instance, the referent of “the ceiling” is linked whether the relation that holds between the referent to the referent of its anchor “the room” through the of the definite description and the referent of its “part-of” relation: because we know that rooms antecedent is one that can be ommitted i.e., one have ceilings, we interpret “the ceiling” in the se- that is supported by human knowledge. cond sentence, not just as denoting any ceiling, but In both cases, knowing the spectrum of relations rather as denoting the ceiling that is part of the that are possible between a definite description and room mentioned in the previous sentence. its antecedent is essential. Without a finite set of relations to start with, a tractable treatment of the (1) a. I looked into the room. The ceiling was inferences involved is unlikely. very high. For the development of computational systems, b. I looked into the room. The duck was very it is also necessary to know where the implicit brid- yellow. ging relation “comes from”: is it a lexical relation 1. Héléne Manuelian gratefully acknowledges the finan- (e.g., meronymy, hyponymy, synonymy) whose en- cial support provided for part of this research by both IN- coding is part of tools such as WordNet? Is it given RIA and the Lorraine Region (CPER Ingenierie logicielle, Pole “Ingéniérie des langues, du document et de l’informa- by world knowledge? etc. tion scientifique, technique et culturelle”). In this paper, we focus on identifying the set of l. Village/Taxi drivers Location/Object relations that can hold between a bridging definite m. Today/The news Time/Object description and its antecedent. Starting from the li- terature, we propose a typology for these relations When either the anchor or the target is a set, the which we then validate on a medium size corpus related object can stand in a subset- or an element- (9500 definite descriptions of which roughly 400 of relation. are bridging definite descriptions). Further, we in- When one of the related individuals is an event, vestigate WordNet (Miller, 1995) and FrameNet the other individual can describe an argument of (Baker et al., 1998) and quantify the number of that event (Clark distinguishes here between obli- cases where these resources actually contain the gatory and optional arguments). relation used between the ontological types of the When both anchors and targets are objects, one antecedent/anaphor pair. We conclude with some of the related object can either fulfill a certain func- indications of which types of lexical resources are tion in the other or specify one of its attributes. needed in order to interpret and/or generate brid- The related objects can also stands in one of the se- ging definite descriptions as well as pointers for veral meronymic relations described by (Winston further research. et al., 1987). A part is a structurally or functio- nally motivated component of a structured whole. 2 A typology of bridging relations Clark further distinguishes between necessary (room- /ceiling), probable (room/window) and inducible In this section, we start by summarising the brid- (room/chandelier) parts. Pieces differ from parts ging relations identified in the literature. We then in that pieces are homoreneous (all pieces are si- explains why it cannot be used directly as a basis milar to each other and to their whole). A collec- for annotation and go on to propose a taxonomy of tion differs from a set in that the group is based on bridging relations which we believe, can reliably a spatial or social connection rather than on physi- be used for large scale annotation. We use the fol- cal similarity. The stuff is the matter of which an lowing terminology. The TARGET is the referent of individual is made and an area is a spatial subpart a bridging definite description which is related by of a whole which cannot be separated from it. some implicit BRIDGING relation to the referent of Finally, an associative link can specify the spa- some previously mentioned entity, the ANCHOR. tial or temporal location of the related object. 2.1 Bridging relations in the literature 2.2 Two requirements for a typology of As e.g., (Clark, 1977; Strand, 1997; Kleiber, 1997) bridging relations have shown the semantic nature of this bridging While the set of relations identified in the lite- relation can vary. The following examples summa- rature is a useful starting point for defining a typo- rise the various bridging possibilities identified in logy of bridging relations, it is insufficient to sup- the literature. port the development of computational models of (2) a. Investment/Two thirds Set/Subset bridging definite descriptions for at least two rea- b. Class/Student Set/Element sons. c. Murder/Murderer Event/Argument First, the proposed typology must provide an ac- curate semantics for bridging relations. As it stands, d. Club/President Individual/Function and as a first annotation pass quickly showed, the e. Bicyle/Price Individual/Attribute set of relations identified in the previous section f. Room/Ceiling Whole/Part does not fulfill this criteria. Consider for instance, g. Cake/Slice Whole/Piece the following anchor/target pairs found in our cor- h. Suitcase/Leather Individual/Stuff pus: i. Forest/Tree Collection/Member (3) a. Operation/Convalescence Following j. France/French waters Place/Area b. Athletism/National federation For k. Opera/Duet Whole/Temp.Subpart c. Question/Answer to ¡ denoting locations and time intervals respecti- d. Investigation/Witness reports Based on vely). This classification is summarised in table 1. We now discuss each class in more detail showing In these examples, the relation holding between in particular, how a specific relation is identified anchor and target is determined by the lexical se- and how its semantics is established. mantics of either target (examples 3a-c) or anchor (examples 3d). Thus, a convalescence follows an Set membership. This class covers cases such operation, a federation groups together associations as (4) where the target is either a member or a sub- acting for a common activity, an answer is a reac- set of a set (a group of similar individuals). tion to a question (or a request) and an investiga- (4) a. Seminars/The last seminar tion is based on witness reports. b. The CGT and the FO/The FO This is in contrast with the standard view of bridging relations which tends to assume a closed c. The army/The third set involving in essence three main types of rela- The semantics of this bridging relation is set tions: inclusion (whole-part, set membership, time membership and inclusion. The anchor (or the tar- and space anchor and locative anaphora), posses- get) must be a set of individuals and the target (or sion (subcategorisation, possessor-thing and func- the anchor) must be an individual. tional associative anaphora) and thematic (event- argument). As we shall see, the typology we pro- Thematic. As illustrated by (2c), the target can pose take these facts into account and encompasses be related to the anchor via a thematic relation (a both the “standard” bridging relations and the more murderer is the agent of a murder). More gene- unconventional “lexical” ones. rally, a thematic bridge links an event to an indivi- A second requirement that must be satisfied in dual via a thematic relation defined by the thema- order to develop a computational model of brid- tic grid of the event. As a result, the property de- ging definite descriptions, is that the possible sour- noted by the noun caracterising the individual ( ¨ © ) ces of bridging relations be identified. Where does must be subsumed by the conjunction of the pro- a bridging relation “come from”? Is it a lexical re- perty denoted by the verb or noun caracterising the lation (meronymy)? Or is it given by a lexical defi- event ( ¨ ) and the thematic relation holding bet- nition, a thematic grid (Event/Argument cases) or ween this event and the individual( ). That © ¨ ¦ by more extensive script- or world-knowledge? If is, ¨ . (and as we shall see, this is indeed the case) all of Definitional.
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