A property-sharing constraint in Centering

Abstract

A constraint is proposed in the Centering approach to pronoun resolution in discourse. This property-sharing constraint requires that two pronominal expressions that retain the same Cb across adjacent utterances share a certain common grammatical property. This property is expressed along the dimension of the grammatical function SUBJECT for both Japanese and English discourses, where different pronominal forms are primarily used to realize the Cb. It is the zero pronominal in Japanese, and the (unstressed) overt pronoun in English. The resulting constraint complements the original Centering, accounting for its apparent violations and providing a solution to the interpretation of multi-pronominal utterances. It also provides an alternative account of anaphora interpretation that appears to be due to structural parallelism. This reconciliation of centering/focusing and parallelism is a major advantage. I will then add another dimension called the speaker identification to the constraint to handle a group of special cases in Japanese discourse. It indicates a close association between centering and th speaker's viewpoint, and sheds light on what underlies the effect of perception reports on pronoun resolution in general. These results, by drawing on facts in two very different languages, demonstrate the cross-linguistic applicability of the centering framework.