--- title: "Anaphora for Everyone — Kennedy 1996" description: "Kennedy and Boguraev address a practical obstacle to pronoun resolution." authors: ["Christopher Kennedy", "Branimir Boguraev"] year: 1996 venue: "COLING 1996 Volume 1: The 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics" source: "https://aclanthology.org/C96-1021/" 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/kennedy-1996-anaphora-everyone-pronominal-anaphora-resolution/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kennedy-1996-anaphora-everyone-pronominal-anaphora-resolution/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1996](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1996/) / Anaphora for Everyone: Pronominal Anaphora Resolution without a Parser # Anaphora for Everyone: Pronominal Anaphora Resolution without a Parser **Authors:** Christopher Kennedy, Branimir Boguraev · **Year:** 1996 · **Venue:** COLING 1996 Volume 1: The 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics · **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/C96-1021/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/C96-1021.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7096976778) **Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) · [53](#cited-by) in our library, of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read ## Summary Kennedy and Boguraev address a practical obstacle to pronoun resolution. The Lappin and Leass (1994) algorithm is accurate but depends on detailed full syntactic parses, which parsers of the time could not reliably produce for arbitrary real-world text. The authors adapt that algorithm to work from shallow input: the LINGSOFT morphosyntactic tagger output, which marks part of speech and grammatical function, plus a token offset for position. Regular-expression filters over the tagged stream do the following: - identify noun phrases, - detect whether NPs sit inside adverbial adjuncts or other NPs, - flag expletive "it". These observations become discourse referents grouped into coreference classes. Candidates are ranked by weighted salience factors, and parse-tree configuration is approximated from precedence and context cues. A new factor rewards referents in the same topical segment, found with a Hearst-style segmenter. On 27 mixed-genre web documents, the system correctly resolved about 75% of third-person pronouns, versus 85% reported for the parser-based original on computer manuals. Few errors stemmed from the missing parse, so robust anaphora resolution is feasible in parser-free pipelines. ## Key points - Input is LINGSOFT tagger output, reported at 99.77% recall and 95.54% precision. Grammatical function tags (e.g., @SUBJ) and token offsets replace full parse trees. - Ten salience factors are used, such as SENT-S (100), SUBJ-S (80), HEAD-S (80), and POSS-S (65). The new CNTX-S (50) rewards referents in the current text segment. - Evaluation covered 27 texts (press releases, news, magazine articles, web pages): 231 of 306 anaphoric third-person pronouns were resolved correctly (≈75%). The 306 excluded 30 undetected expletive "it" and 6 "it" referring to VPs or propositions. - Error analysis attributes 35% of errors to gender mismatch, since the tagger lacks consistent gender data, and 14% to in-line quoted passages. - Of 75 errors, only 2 came from missed configurational disjoint reference, which supports the claim that full parsing is largely unnecessary. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [Coreference resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/coreference-resolution/) · [Part-of-speech tagging](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/part-of-speech-tagging/) ## Cited by Cited by 53 papers of our library cite it (of the 140673 whose bibliographies we read); 18 of them have a page here, 35 not yet. - [Using Syntax to Resolve NPE in English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/aclbulk-2019-khullar-syntax-resolve-npe-english/) - [CogNIAC: high precision coreference with limited knowledge and linguistic resources](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/baldwin-1997-cogniac-high-precision-coreference-limited/) - [Evaluation Tool for Rule-based Anaphora Resolution Methods](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/barbu-2001-evaluation-tool-rule-based-anaphora/) - [An Expectation Maximization Approach to Pronoun Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cherry-2005-expectation-maximization-approach-pronoun-resolution/) - [Multilingual Coreference Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/harabagiu-2000-multilingual-coreference-resolution/) - [Probabilistic Coreference in Information Extraction](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kehler-1997-probabilistic-coreference-information-extraction/) - [Automatic Pronominal Anaphora Resolution in English Texts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/liang-2003-automatic-pronominal-anaphora-resolution-english/) - [Pronominal and Sortal Anaphora Resolution for Biomedical Literature](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lin-2004-pronominal-sortal-anaphora-resolution-biomedical/) - [Coreference or Not: A Twin Model for Coreference Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/luo-2007-coreference-or-not-twin-model/) - [Comparing Knowledge Sources for Nominal Anaphora Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/markert-2005-comparing-knowledge-sources-nominal-anaphora/) - [Multilingual Robust Anaphora Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/mitkov-1998-multilingual-robust-anaphora-resolution/) - [Robust Pronoun Resolution with Limited Knowledge](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/mitkov-1998-robust-pronoun-resolution-limited-knowledge/) - [An Algorithm for Anaphora Resolution in Spanish Texts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/palomar-2001-algorithm-anaphora-resolution-spanish-texts/) - [A General-Purpose, Off-the-shelf Anaphora Resolution Module: Implementation and Preliminary Evaluation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/poesio-2004-general-purpose-off-shelf-anaphora/) - [A Public Reference Implementation of the RAP Anaphora Resolution Algorithm](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/qiu-2004-public-reference-implementation-rap-anaphora/) - [Functional Centering – Grounding Referential Coherence on Information Structure](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/strube-1999-functional-centering-grounding-referential-coherence/) - [Coreference Systems Based on Kernels Methods](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/versley-2008-coreference-systems-based-kernels-methods/) - [Global Learning of Noun Phrase Anaphoricity in Coreference Resolution via Label Propagation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhou-2009-global-learning-noun-phrase-anaphoricity/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{kennedy1996anaphora, title = {{Anaphora for Everyone: Pronominal Anaphora Resolution without a Parser}}, author = {Kennedy, Christopher and Boguraev, Branimir}, booktitle = {COLING 1996 Volume 1: The 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics}, year = {1996}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/C96-1021/} } ``` - [← previous Anaphor Resolution and the Scope of Syntactic Constraints](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/stuckardt-1996-anaphor-resolution-scope-syntactic-constraints/) - [next → Anaphora Resolution of Japanese Zero Pronouns with Deictic Reference](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nakaiwa-1996-anaphora-resolution-japanese-zero-pronouns/) - [↑ back to papers of 1996](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1996/) ## References 8 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Marti Hearst. 1994. Multi-paragraph segmentation of expository text. In 32nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics, Morristown, New Jersey. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marti+Hearst%2E+1994%2E+Multi%2Dparagraph+segmentation+of+expository+text%2E+In+32nd+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%2C+Las+Cruces%2C+New+Mexico%2E+Association+for+Computational+Ling) 2. Irene Heim. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Irene+Heim%2E+1982%2E+The+Semantics+of+Definite+and+Indefinite+Noun+Phrases%2E+Doctoral+dissertation%2C+University+of+Massachusetts%2C+Amherst%2E) 3. Hans Kamp. 1981. A theory of truth and semantic representation. In J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, and M. Stokhof (eds.), Formal Methods in the Study of Language. Mathematisch Centrum Tracts, Amsterdam. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hans+Kamp%2E+1981%2E+A+theory+of+truth+and+semantic+representation%2E+In+J%2E+Groenendijk%2C+T%2E+Janssen%2C+and+M%2E+Stokhof+%28eds%2E%29%2C+Formal+Methods+in+the+Study+of+Language%2E+Mathematisch+Centrum+Tracts%2C+Amsterdam%2E) 4. Fred Karlsson, Atro Voutilainen, Juha Heikkila, and Arto Antilla. 1995. Constraint grammar: A language-independent system for parsing free text. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fred+Karlsson%2C+Atro+Voutilainen%2C+Juha+Heikkila%2C+and+Arto+Antilla%2E+1995%2E+Constraint+grammar%3A+A+language%2Dindependent+system+for+parsing+free+text%2E+Mouton+de+Gruyter%2C+Berlin%2FNew+York%2E) 5. Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry, 8:62-100. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Edward+Keenan+and+Bernard+Comrie%2E+1977%2E+Noun+phrase+accessibility+and+universal+grammar%2E+Linguistic+Inquiry%2C+8%3A62%2D100%2E) 6. Christopher Kennedy and Branimir Boguraev. 1996. Anaphora in a wider context: Tracking discourse referents. In W. Wahlster (ed.), I2th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, London/New York. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christopher+Kennedy+and+Branimir+Boguraev%2E+1996%2E+Anaphora+in+a+wider+context%3A+Tracking+discourse+referents%2E+In+W%2E+Wahlster+%28ed%2E%29%2C+I2th+European+Conference+on+Artificial+Intelligence%2E+John+Wiley+and+So) 7. Shalom Lappin and Herb Leass. 1994. An algorithm for pronominal anaphora resolution. Computational Linguistics, 20(4):535-561. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Shalom+Lappin+and+Herb+Leass%2E+1994%2E+An+algorithm+for+pronominal+anaphora+resolution%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+20%284%29%3A535%2D561%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lappin-1994-algorithm-pronominal-anaphora-resolution/) 8. Atro Voutilainen, Juha Heikkila, and Arto Antilla. 1992. A constraint grammar of English: A performance-oriented approach. University of Helsinki, Publication No. 21, Helsinki, Finland. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Atro+Voutilainen%2C+Juha+Heikkila%2C+and+Arto+Antilla%2E+1992%2E+A+constraint+grammar+of+English%3A+A+performance%2Doriented+approach%2E+University+of+Helsinki%2C+Publication+No%2E+21%2C+Helsinki%2C+Finland%2E)