Anaphores parallèles et techniques de résolution

Abstract

C. Gardent, Université de Sarrebruck : « Anaphores parallèles et techniques de résolution » This paper argues that Higher-Order Unification (HOU) is preferable to overwriting techniques for dealing with parallel anaphors i.e. non-nominal anaphors whose resolution is constrained by parallelism. Computationally, we show that overwriting techniques have undesirable properties which make their use incompatible with unification-based grammars. Linguistically, we show that HOU permits a high level of linguistic adequacy in that it achieves a reasonably wide empirical covering (e.g. VP ellipsis, focus, Second Occurrence Expressions) while minimising both under- and over- generation. The HOU approach we propose is systematically compared with comparable existing theories.