Anaphoric ambiguity in natural language processing

Anaphoric ambiguity in natural language processing, Definition of lexical ambiguity, types of ambiguity, examples of lexical ambiguity, how to resolve lexical ambiguity, what is lexical ambiguity

Anaphoric ambiguity 

Anaphora in linguistics is about referring backwards (or an entity in another context) in a text.  

“Suresh kicked the ball. It went out of the stadium”

In this sentence, the pronoun “it” is an anaphor. This anaphor refers to the entity “the ball” in the previous sentence. The entity is described as the antecedent of anaphor “it”. This example is simple and does not show any ambiguity. Let us see one more example sentence;

“London had snow yesterday. It fell to a depth of a meter”

In this sentence, how do we relate the pronoun “it” with the previous sentence? We have three antecedents namely “London”, “snow” and “yesterday”. We can relate the anaphor to either “London”, or “snow”, or “yesterday”. We would be able to get the correct meaning if we relate the anaphor to the antecedent “snow”.

Some words (anaphors) in a sentence have little or no meaning of their own but instead refer to other words in the same or other sentences. Anaphoric ambiguity refers to such a situation where an anaphor have more than one possible reference in the same or other sentence.

Some facts about anaphoric ambiguity

• Anaphors are mostly pronouns, or noun phrases in some cases.

Example: “Darshan plays keyboard. He loves music”. In this sentence, the anaphor “He” is a pronoun.

“A puppy drank the milk. The cute little dog was satisfied”. In this sentence, the anaphor “The cute little dog” is a noun pharse.

• Anaphoric references may not explicitly present in the previous sentence. Instead it may refer a part of an entity (antecedent) in the previous sentence.

Example: “I went to the hospital, and they told me to go home and rest”. Here, the anaphor “they” refers not to the “hospital” directly, instead to the “hospital staff”.

• Anaphors may not be in the immediately previous sentence. They may present in the sentences before the previous one or may present in the same sentence.

Example: “The horse ran up the hill. It was very steep. It soon got tired”. Here, the anaphor “it” of the third sentence refers the “horse” in the first sentence.

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What is anaphoric ambiguity?

Define anaphoric ambiguity in NLP

Is anaphoric ambiguity a problem in NLP?

Types of ambiguity

Example English sentences with anaphoric ambiguity 

Important factors about anaphoric ambiguity