Noun Phrase Coreference as Clustering
Claire Cardie, Kiri L. Wagstaff · 1999
This paper introduces a new, unsupervised algorithm for noun phrase coreference resolution. It differs from existing methods in that it views coreference resolution as a clustering task. In an evaluation on the MUC-6 coreference resolution corpus, the algorithm achieves an F-measure of 53.6%, placing it firmly between the worst (40%) and best (65%) systems in the MUC-6 evaluation. More importantly, the clustering approach outperforms the only MUC-6 system to treat coreference resolution as a learning problem. The clustering algorithm appears to provide a flexible mechanism for coordinating the application of context-independent and context-dependent constraints and preferences for accurate partitioning of noun phrases into coreference equivalence classes.