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<Paper uid="P86-1031">
  <Title>A PROPERTY-SHARING CONSTRAINT IN CENTERING</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="205" end_page="205" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
4. Conclusions
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Within the framework of the Centering approach to pronoun resolution in discourse, I have proposed an additional constraint for Japanese and English. This property-sharing consln~int requires that two pronominal expressions that retain the same Cb across adjacent utterances share a c~Lain common grammatical property.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> This property has been identified in two dimensions. One has to do with the grammatical function SUBJECT, and the other has to do with the speaker identification property Ident. The latter is necessary for Japanese discourse where the primary Cb-realizcr is the zero pronominal, but not for English discourse where it is the (unstressed) overt pronoun. The resulting constraint complements the original Centering rule, accounting for its apparent violations and providing a solution to the interpretation of multi-pronominal utterances.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Two significant implications of the proposed constraint have been discussed. First, the SUBJECT constraint 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 advantase of this constraint. Second, the speaker identification constraint found in Japanese indicates a close association between centering and the speaker's viewpoint.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> In particular, it sheds light on what underlies the effect of perception reports on pronoun resolution. These results, by drawing on facts in two very different languages, demonstrate the cross-linguistic applicability of the centering framework in general.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The present property-sharing constraint highlights a grsmmatical aspect that contributes to local discourse coherence. It will be integrated into the default rules which, by ordering the candidate referents for a pronominal expression, control the pragmatic inferences involved in pronoun resolution.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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