Centering in Japanese
Shingo Takada, Norihisa Doi · 1994
An extension of the notion of "centering" is desribed for interpreting zero pronouns and overt pronouns in naturally occurring Japanese text. In previous work, one zero-pronoun encodes the backward-looking center, with pronouns and other zero-pronouns handled as if they were overtly expressed. An investigation is made, and from it pronouns and zero pronouns are concluded to be more salient than other overt noun phrases. This enables better interpretation of pronouns and zero-pronouns.