--- title: "Toward Givenness Hierarchy Theoretic Natural — Pal 2020" description: "A robot that talks with people must choose between it , this N , that N and the N . The Givenness Hierarchy (GH) says that the form reflects the cognitive…" authors: ["Poulomi Pal", "Tom Williams"] year: 2020 venue: "arXiv:2007.16009" source: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009" arxiv: "2007.16009" licence: "arXiv non-exclusive distribution licence (read only, no redistribution)" licence_url: "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/pal-2020-toward-givenness-hierarchy-theoretic-natural/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/pal-2020-toward-givenness-hierarchy-theoretic-natural/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/6/) / Toward Givenness Hierarchy Theoretic Natural Language Generation # Toward Givenness Hierarchy Theoretic Natural Language Generation **Authors:** Poulomi Pal and Tom Williams · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** arXiv:2007.16009 **Link:** [arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009) · **Licence:** arXiv non-exclusive distribution licence — summary only [**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3046251652) OpenAlex · 2026-10-14 · [arXiv:2007.16009](https://openalex.org/S4306400194) · [licence](http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009) - [PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.16009) - [arXiv 2007.16009](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3046251652) **Authors (2)** 1. Poulomi Pal 2. [Tom Williams](https://openalex.org/A5101736923) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7921-771X) · h 26 · 2150 citations · 169 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about A robot that talks with people must choose between *it*, *this N*, *that N* and *the N*. The Givenness Hierarchy (GH) says that the form reflects the cognitive status a referent has in the hearer's mind: in focus, activated, familiar, uniquely identifiable, referential, type identifiable. Earlier work used GH data structures to understand anaphora. This paper addresses generation. It proposes a per-entity Bayesian filter that keeps a distribution over three statuses (in focus, activated, familiar), updated by how each mention is used (not mentioned, mentioned in a non-topic role, mentioned as topic). It also gives a Describe algorithm that picks a form from the status, uses only same-or-higher-status entities as distractors, and adjusts the form for distance. No experiment is reported; the authors plan a human study of preferred referring forms. ## Ideas - I1. A count-based status tracker: per entity, a state among the three statuses, changed by a fixed transition table keyed on the grammatical role of the mention (subject or topic moves to in focus; object to activated; others to familiar). Store the table in a BTreeMap so updates are deterministic. - I2. Form rule: choose *it* if the entity is in focus with no competing distractor, *this N* if activated, *that N* if familiar, and *the N* otherwise. Check the rule against the pronoun and demonstrative choices in Mova's own coreference data. - I3. Narrow the distractor set by status: only entities of the same or higher status need ruling out. This shrinks the candidate set checked in `coref/src/sieve.rs`. - I4. Negative control: a random status assignment must give worse form accuracy than the tracker. ## For Mova Chapter: [languages/en/35-reference-and-coreference.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/35-reference-and-coreference/), and [languages/en/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals/) for the forms. Code: `coref/src/sieve.rs` and `coref/src/mention.rs`. Measure: form accuracy (pronoun, demonstrative, definite) on a held-out set of Mova texts, and the mean number of distractors checked per mention; two runs must match. ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [arXiv 2007.16009](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009) ```bibtex @misc{pal2020toward, title = {{Toward Givenness Hierarchy Theoretic Natural Language Generation}}, author = {Pal, Poulomi and Williams, Tom}, year = {2020}, eprint = {2007.16009}, archivePrefix = {arXiv}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16009} } ``` - [← previous Toward Gender-Inclusive Coreference Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cao-2020-gender-inclusive-coreference-resolution/) - [next → Towards a Comprehensive Model for Interpreting Word Order in Classical Biblical Hebrew](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2020-khan-towards-comprehensive-model-interpreting-word/) - [↑ back to papers of 2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/6/) ## References 2 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Arnold, J. E. (2016). Explicit and emergent mechanisms of information status. Topics in Cog. Sci.. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Arnold%2C+J%2E+E%2E+%282016%29%2E+Explicit+and+emergent+mechanisms+of+information+status%2E+Topics+in+Cog%2E+Sci%2E%2E) 2. Callaway, C. B., & Lester, J. C. (2002). Pronominalization in generated discourse and dialogue. Proc. ACL (pp. 88–95). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Callaway%2C+C%2E+B%2E%2C+%26+Lester%2C+J%2E+C%2E+%282002%29%2E+Pronominalization+in+generated+discourse+and+dialogue%2E+Proc%2E+ACL+%28pp%2E+88%E2%80%9395%29%2E)