--- title: "Current theories of centering for pronoun interpretation: a critical" description: "Kehler examines the BFP algorithm (Brennan, Friedman, and Pollard 1987, also used by Walker, Iida… 3 references, cited by 4 papers here." authors: ["Andrew Kehler"] year: 1997 venue: "Computational Linguistics" source: "https://aclanthology.org/J97-3006/" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kehler-1997-current-theories-centering-pronoun-interpretation/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kehler-1997-current-theories-centering-pronoun-interpretation/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1997](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1997/) / Current theories of centering for pronoun interpretation: a critical evaluation # Current theories of centering for pronoun interpretation: a critical evaluation **Authors:** [Andrew Kehler](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/andrew-kehler/) · **Year:** 1997 · **Venue:** [Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/cl/) ([Computational Linguistics 1997](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/cl/1997/)) · **Publisher:** [The MIT Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/the-mit-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/J97-3006/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/J97-3006.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2167962720) **Citations:** 100 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · [4](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kehler-1997-current-theories-centering-pronoun-interpretation/cited-by/) in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read ## Summary This short critical paper ("squib") in Computational Linguistics asks whether a widely used centering-based pronoun resolution method reflects the reasons centering theory was proposed. Centering (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein 1995, GJW) is motivated by garden-path effects, which suggest that listeners commit to a pronoun's referent before the whole sentence is understood. Kehler examines the BFP algorithm (Brennan, Friedman, and Pollard 1987, also used by Walker, Iida, and Cote 1994). BFP ranks candidate assignments using transition types between utterances. The study uses no corpus or experiments. It argues from constructed examples and informal acceptability judgments. BFP handles GJW's well-known Terry/Tony example. However, the backward-looking center (Cb) of an utterance depends on the entire utterance, so BFP must read a full sentence before choosing referents. As a result, it predicts different preferences for minimally different sentences that speakers judge alike. A second set of examples shows that coherence relations such as narration versus parallelism also shift pronoun preferences, and BFP cannot capture this. The paper cautions against treating BFP as a model of incremental, human-like pronoun interpretation. ## Key points - **Centering concepts reviewed:** - Cb, the backward-looking center. - Cf, the ranked list of forward-looking centers. - Cp, the highest-ranked member of Cf. - Rule 1, about pronominalizing the Cb. - Rule 2, about preferences among transitions. - **What BFP adds:** it splits Shift into Smooth-Shift and Rough-Shift. It then orders the transitions Continue > Retain > Smooth-Shift > Rough-Shift and uses a generate–filter–rank procedure. - **Example (6), Terry/Tony variants e1–e3:** speakers appear to share the same initial preference across all three variants, which produces a garden path. BFP's analysis, however, differs between them (Table 2). - **Incremental fix also fails:** an incremental version of BFP that assigns provisional referents (footnote 7) would wrongly predict a double garden path for variant e2. - **Example (7), Dole/Clinton/Perot:** two follow-ups have identical Cb/Cp configurations but different preferred referents. This points to approaches that model coherence relations (e.g., Kameyama 1996; Kehler 1995). *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* ## Institutions - [SRI International](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/sri-international/) — Research institute, Menlo Park, United States · 24 works · 12,175 citations 📚 Shelves (4): [🖥️ Computer Science](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · 18,614 works · [🤖 Artificial Intelligence](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/) · 17,965 works · [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 17,450 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 17,296 works ## Cite Cite as: Andrew Kehler. 1997. Current theories of centering for pronoun interpretation: a critical evaluation. Computational Linguistics. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @article{kehler1997current, title = {{Current theories of centering for pronoun interpretation: a critical evaluation}}, author = {Andrew Kehler}, journal = {Computational Linguistics}, year = {1997}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/J97-3006/} } ``` - [← previous A Frame-Semantic Approach to Semantic Annotation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lowe-1997-frame-semantic-approach-semantic-annotation/) - [next → An Empirical Approach to VP Ellipsis](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hardt-1997-empirical-approach-vp-ellipsis/) - [↑ back to papers of 1997](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1997/) ## References 3 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Brennan, Susan E. 1995. Centering attention in discourse. Language and Cognitive Processes, 10:137-167. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Brennan%2C+Susan+E%2E+1995%2E+Centering+attention+in+discourse%2E+Language+and+Cognitive+Processes%2C+10%3A137%2D167%2E) 2. Brennan, Susan E., Marilyn W. Friedman, and Carl J. Pollard. 1987. [A centering approach to pronouns](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/brennan-1987-centering-approach-pronouns/). In Proceedings of the 25th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 155-162. 3. Di Eugenio, Barbara. 1990. Centering theory and the Italian pronominal system. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING-90), pages 270-275. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Di+Eugenio%2C+Barbara%2E+1990%2E+Centering+theory+and+the+Italian+pronominal+system%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+13th+International+Conference+on+Computational+Linguistics+%28COLING%2D90%29%2C+pages+270%2D275%2E) *Updated 30 October 2026*