<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Paper uid="P96-1057">
  <Title>Processing Complex Sentences in the Centering Framework</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The centering model (Grosz et al., 1995) focuses on the resolution of inter-sentential anaphora. Since intra-sentential anaphora occur at high rates in real-world texts, the model has to be extended for the resolution of anaphora at the sentence level. However, the centering framework is not fully specified to handie complex sentences (Suri &amp; McCoy, 1994). This underspocification corresponds to the lack of a precise definition of the expression utterance, a term always used but intentionally left undefined 1. Therefore, the centering algorithms currently under discussion are not able to handle naturally occurring discourse. Possible strategies for treating sentence-level anaphora within the centering framework are  1. processing sentences linearly one clause at a time (as suggested by Grosz et al. (1995)), 2. preference for sentence-external antecedents which are proposed by the centering mechanism, 3. preference for sentence-internal antecedents which are filtered by the usual binding criteria, 4. a mixed-mode which prefers only a particular set of sentence-internal over sentence-external antecedents (e.g. Suri &amp; McCoy (1994)).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1">  The question arises as to which strategy fits best for the interaction between the resolution of intra- and inter-sentential anaphora. In my contribution, evidence for a mixed-mode strategy is brought forward, which favors a particular set of sentence-internal antecedents given by functional criteria.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> 1Cf. the sketchy statements by Brennan et al. (1987, p.155): &amp;quot;\[...\] U is an utterance (not necessarily a full clause) \[...\]&amp;quot;, and by Grosz et al. (1995, p.209): &amp;quot;U need not to be a full clause.&amp;quot;</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>