Anaphora Resolution in Japanese Sentences Using Surface Expressions and Examples

Anaphora resolution is one of the major problems in natural language processing. It is also one of the important tasks in machine translation and man/machine dialogue. We solve the problem by using surface expressions and examples. Surface expressions are the words in sentences which provide clues for anaphora resolution. Examples are linguistic data which are actually used in conversations and texts. The method using surface expressions and examples is a practical method. This thesis handles almost all kinds of anaphora: i. The referential property and number of a noun phrase ii. Noun phrase direct anaphora iii. Noun phrase indirect anaphora iv. Pronoun anaphora v. Verb phrase ellipsis