Functional Centering -- Grounding Referential Coherence in Information Structure
Michael Strube, Udo Hahn · 1999
this paper gives a comprehensive picture of a complex, yet not explicitly spelled-out theory of discourse coherence, the centering model (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein, 1983, 1995) marked a major step in clarifying the relationship between attentional states and (local) discourse segment structure. More precisely, the centering model accounts for the interactions between local coherence and preferential choices of referring expressions. It relates differences in coherence (in part) to varying demands on inferences as required by different types of referring expressions, given a particular attentional state of the hearer in a discourse setting (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein 1995, 204-205). The claim is made then that the lower the inference load put on the hearer, the more coherent the underlying discourse appears. The centering model as formulated by Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein (1995) refines the structure of "centers" of discourse, which are conceived as the representational device for the attentional state at the local level of discourse. They distinguish two basic types of centers, which can be assigned to each utterance Ui--a single backward- looking center, Cb(Ui), and a partially ordered set of discourse entities, the forward- looking centers, Cf(Ui). The ordering on Cf is relevant for determining the Cb. It can be viewed as a salience ranking that reflects the assumption that the higher the ranking of a discourse entity in Cf, the more likely it will be mentioned again in the immediately following utterance. Thus, given an adequate ordering of the discourse entities in Cf, the costs of computations necessary to establish local coherence are minimized