---
title: "Annotating Anaphoric and Bridging Relations — Mueller 2001"
description: "This paper addresses the need for manually annotated corpora to train and evaluate systems that resolve anaphoric and bridging relations."
authors: ["Christoph Mueller", "Michael Strube"]
year: 2001
venue: "Proceedings of the Second SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/W01-1612/"
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/papers/mueller-2001-annotating-anaphoric-bridging-relations-mmax/"
---
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# Annotating Anaphoric and Bridging Relations with MMAX

**Authors:** Christoph Mueller, [Michael Strube](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/authors/michael-strube/) · **Year:** 2001 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Second SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue · **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/W01-1612/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W01-1612.pdf)

**Citations:** [14](#cited-by) in our library, of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read

## Summary
This paper addresses the need for manually annotated corpora to train and evaluate systems that resolve anaphoric and bridging relations. The authors first sharpen the definitions of both phenomena, contrasting them with Vieira & Poesio (2000). They treat cospecification as the defining property of anaphora, so that head-noun identity alone no longer decides the category. Bridging is limited to non-cospecifying expressions that are conceptually linked to an earlier entity.

From these definitions they derive an annotation scheme. Its main design choice is to make cospecification sets mandatory and explicit antecedent marking optional. This spares annotators from making arbitrary choices when several candidates are plausible.

The scheme is then implemented in MMAX (Multi-Modal Annotation in XML), a Java tool developed by the authors. It is applied to German texts from the Heidelberg Text Corpus (HTC). The paper reports no quantitative evaluation. Its contribution is a principled scheme together with a flexible, XML-based tool that can be adapted to other annotation tasks, including multi-modal data.

## Key points
- **Data:** The HTC contains 577 short German texts describing Heidelberg. They were collected for a tourist information system in the DeepMap project.
- **Relation types:** Anaphor sub-types are direct, pronominal and IS-A. Bridging sub-types are part-whole, cause-effect and entity-attribute.
- **Antecedent constraint:** One expression may serve as antecedent to several others, but no expression may have more than one antecedent.
- **Markable attributes:**
  - np form, which distinguishes six classes: proper nouns; NPs that are either definite or indefinite; and pronouns of the personal, possessive or demonstrative kind.
  - Agreement, recorded as person/number/gender.
  - Grammatical role: subject, object or other.
- **MMAX system attributes:** Each markable has id, span, type, member and pointer.
  - The member attribute encodes set membership, which is used here for cospecification.
  - The pointer attribute links a markable to at most one other markable, which allows n:1 relations.
  - The type attribute determines which user-defined attributes appear in an adaptive attribute window.
- **Evaluation compatibility:** Because antecedents are optional, the annotations remain compatible with evaluation in the style of Vilain et al. (1995), which treats cospecifying expressions as equivalence classes.

*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/shelves/linguistics/)

Topics: [Coreference resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/topics/coreference-resolution/)

## Cited by

Cited by

14 papers of our library cite it (of the 140673 whose bibliographies we read); 4 of them have a page here, 10 not yet.

- [The MULI Project: Annotation and Analysis of Information Structure in German and English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/baumann-2004-muli-project-annotation-analysis-information/)
- [Which bridges for bridging definite descriptions?](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/gardent-2003-which-bridges-bridging-definite-descriptions/)
- [Coreference Annotation Scheme and Relation Types for Hindi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/mujadia-2016-coreference-annotation-scheme-relation-types/)
- [Coreference meets Universal Dependencies – a pilot experiment on harmonizing coreference datasets for 11 languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/nedoluzhko-2021-coreference-meets-universal-dependencies/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{mueller2001annotating,
  title = {{Annotating Anaphoric and Bridging Relations with MMAX}},
  author = {Mueller, Christoph and Strube, Michael},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Second SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue},
  year = {2001},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/W01-1612/}
}
```

- [← previous An Algorithm for Anaphora Resolution in Spanish Texts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/palomar-2001-algorithm-anaphora-resolution-spanish-texts/)
- [next → Building a Discourse-Tagged Corpus in the Framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/carlson-2001-building-discourse-tagged-corpus-framework/)
- [↑ back to papers of 2001](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/2001/)

## References

11 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Aone, C. & S. W. Bennett (1994). Discourse tagging tool and discourse-tagged multilingual corpora. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Sharable Natural Language Resources (SNLR), Ikoma, Nara, Japan, 10–11 August, 1994, pp. 71–77. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Aone%2C+C%2E+%26+S%2E+W%2E+Bennett+%281994%29%2E+Discourse+tagging+tool+and+discourse%2Dtagged+multilingual+corpora%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+International+Workshop+on+Sharable+Natural+Language+Resources+%28SNLR%29%2C+Ikoma%2C+Na)
2. Clark, H. H. (1975). Bridging. In Proc. of TINLAP-1, pp. 169–174. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Clark%2C+H%2E+H%2E+%281975%29%2E+Bridging%2E+In+Proc%2E+of+TINLAP%2D1%2C+pp%2E+169%E2%80%93174%2E)
3. DeCristofaro, J., M. Strube & K. F. McCoy (1999). Building a tool for annotating reference in discourse. In ACL ’99 Workshop on the Relationship between Discourse/Dialogue Structure and Reference, University of Maryland, Maryland, 21 June, 1999, pp. 54–62. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=DeCristofaro%2C+J%2E%2C+M%2E+Strube+%26+K%2E+F%2E+McCoy+%281999%29%2E+Building+a+tool+for+annotating+reference+in+discourse%2E+In+ACL+%E2%80%9999+Workshop+on+the+Relationship+between+Discourse%2FDialogue+Structure+and+Reference%2C+Uni)
4. Hirschman, L. & N. Chinchor (1997). MUC-7 Coreference Task Definition, [http://www.muc.saic.com/proceedings/](http://www.muc.saic.com/proceedings/). [↗](http://www.muc.saic.com/proceedings/)
5. Malaka, R. & A. Zipf (2000). Deep Map: Challenging IT research in the framework of a tourist information system. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism (ENTER 2000), Barcelona, Spain, 26-28 April, 2000. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Malaka%2C+R%2E+%26+A%2E+Zipf+%282000%29%2E+Deep+Map%3A+Challenging+IT+research+in+the+framework+of+a+tourist+information+system%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+International+Conference+on+Information+and+Communication+Technol)
6. Müller, C. & M. Strube (2001). MMAX: A tool for the annotation of multi-modal corpora. In Proceedings of 2nd IJCAI Workshop on Knowledge and Reasoning in Practical Dialogue Systems, Seattle, Wash., 5 August 2001. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mu%CC%88ller%2C+C%2E+%26+M%2E+Strube+%282001%29%2E+MMAX%3A+A+tool+for+the+annotation+of+multi%2Dmodal+corpora%2E+In+Proceedings+of+2nd+IJCAI+Workshop+on+Knowledge+and+Reasoning+in+Practical+Dialogue+Systems%2C+Seattle%2C+Wash%2E%2C+5)
7. Orǎsan, C. (2000). ClinkA a coreferential links annotator. In Proc. of LREC ’00, pp. 491–496. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ora%CC%8Csan%2C+C%2E+%282000%29%2E+ClinkA+a+coreferential+links+annotator%2E+In+Proc%2E+of+LREC+%E2%80%9900%2C+pp%2E+491%E2%80%93496%2E)
8. Sidner, C. L. (1983). Focusing in the comprehension of definite anaphora. In M. Brady & R. Berwick (Eds.), Computational Models of Discourse, pp. 267–330. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sidner%2C+C%2E+L%2E+%281983%29%2E+Focusing+in+the+comprehension+of+definite+anaphora%2E+In+M%2E+Brady+%26+R%2E+Berwick+%28Eds%2E%29%2C+Computational+Models+of+Discourse%2C+pp%2E+267%E2%80%93330%2E+Cambridge%2C+Mass%2E%3A+MIT+Press%2E)
9. Thompson, H. S. & D. McKelvie (1997). Hyperlink semantics for standoff markup of read-only documents. In Proceedings of SGML Europe ’97, Barcelona, Spain, May 1997. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Thompson%2C+H%2E+S%2E+%26+D%2E+McKelvie+%281997%29%2E+Hyperlink+semantics+for+standoff+markup+of+read%2Donly+documents%2E+In+Proceedings+of+SGML+Europe+%E2%80%9997%2C+Barcelona%2C+Spain%2C+May+1997%2E)
10. Vieira, R. & M. Poesio (2000). An empirically-based system for processing definite descriptions. Computational Linguistics, 26(4):539–593. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Vieira%2C+R%2E+%26+M%2E+Poesio+%282000%29%2E+An+empirically%2Dbased+system+for+processing+definite+descriptions%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+26%284%29%3A539%E2%80%93593%2E)
11. Vilain, M., J. Burger, J. Aberdeen, D. Connolly & L. Hirschman (1995). A model-theoretic coreference scoring scheme. In Proceedings fo the 6th Message Understanding Conference (MUC-6), pp. 45–52. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Vilain%2C+M%2E%2C+J%2E+Burger%2C+J%2E+Aberdeen%2C+D%2E+Connolly+%26+L%2E+Hirschman+%281995%29%2E+A+model%2Dtheoretic+coreference+scoring+scheme%2E+In+Proceedings+fo+the+6th+Message+Understanding+Conference+%28MUC%2D6%29%2C+pp%2E+45%E2%80%9352%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/vilain-1995-model-theoretic-coreference-scoring-scheme/)