Anaphora (linguistics) - Anaphor Resolution

Anaphor Resolution

The resolution of an anaphor means finding what it is referring to. Resolution can be difficult when sentences are taken out of context:

The Prime Minister of New Zealand visited us yesterday. The visit was the first time she had come to New York since 1998.

If the second sentence is quoted by itself, it is necessary to resolve the anaphor:

The visit was the first time the Prime Minister of New Zealand had come to New York since 1998.

Although of course, as The Prime Minister of New Zealand is an office of state and she would seem to refer to the person currently occupying that office, it could quite easily be that the Prime Minister of New Zealand had visited New York since 1998 and before the present day, whilst the present incumbent she had not.

However, even when taken in context, anaphor resolution can become increasingly complex. Consider the three examples:

We gave the bananas to the monkeys because they were hungry.

We gave the bananas to the monkeys because they were ripe.

We gave the bananas to the monkeys because they were here.

In the first sentence, "they" refers to "monkeys", whereas in the second sentence, "they" refers to "bananas". A pragmatic understanding that monkeys get hungry, while bananas become ripe is necessary when resolving this ambiguity. Since this type of understanding is still poorly implemented in software, automated anaphora resolution is currently an area of active research within the realm of natural language processing. The third sentence isn't easily resolved either way. This anaphor resolves to either or both.