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<Paper uid="J99-3001">
  <Title>Functional Centering Grounding Referential Coherence in Information Structure</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="311" end_page="313" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
4 See Jaeggli (1986) for special cases where this criterion is overruled.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Strube and Hahn Functional Centering Let us illustrate these different types of phenomena by considering the following text fragment: Example 1 a. Ein Reserve-Batteriepack versorgt den 316LT ca. 2 Minuten mit Strom. \[A reserve battery pack\]nom - supplies - the \[316LT\]acc - for approximately 2 minutes - with power.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The 316LT is supplied with power by a reserve battery pack for approximately 2 minutes.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> b. Der Status des Akkus wird dem Anwender angezeigt. \[The status - \[of the rechargeable battery cell\]gen\]nom -- is -- \[to the user\]aat signalled. null The status of the rechargeable battery cell is signalled to the user. c. Ca. 30 Minuten vor der Entleerung beginnt der Rechner 5 Sekunden zu piepen.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Approximately 30 minutes - before discharge - starts - \[the computer\]nmam c - for 5 seconds - to beep.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Approximately 30 minutes before discharge the computer beeps for 5 seconds.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> d. 5 Minuten bevor er sich ausschaltet, f/ingt die Low-Battery-LED an zu blinken.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> 5 minutes - before - \[it\]n m~sc - itself - turns off - begins - \[the low-battery-LED\],om - to flash.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> 5 minutes before it turns off, the low-battery-LED begins to flash. Common to all the varieties of anaphora we discuss is the search for the proper antecedent in previous utterances, the correct determination of which is considered to be the task of the centering mechanism. The kinds of anaphora we treat can be distinguished, however, in terms of the criteria being evaluated for referentiality. In the case of inferables, the missing conceptual link must be inferred in order to establish local coherence between the utterances involved. In the surface form of utterance (lb) the information that Akkus, 'rechargeable battery cell', links up with 316LT is missing, while, due to obvious conceptual constraints, it cannot link up with Reserve-Batteriepack, for example. The underlying relation can only be made explicit if conceptual knowledge about the domain, viz. the relation PART-OF between the concepts RECHARGEBAT-TERYCELL and 316LT, is available (see Hahn, Markert, and Strube \[1996\] for a detailed treatment of the resolution of inferables). In the case of nominal anaphors, a conceptual specialization relation has to be determined between the specific antecedent and the more general anaphoric expression, for example, between 316LT and Rechner, 'computer', in (la) and (lc), respectively. Finally, the resolution of pronominal anaphors need not take conceptual constraints into account at all, but is restricted to grammatical constraints, as illustrated by the masculine gender of Rechner, 'computermasc', (co-specifying with 316LTmasc) and er 'it'masc, in (lc) and (ld), respectively. Certainly, the types of phenomena we discuss cover only a limited range of anaphora. In particular, we leave out the whole range of quantificational studies on anaphora (in particular, the &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; issues related to generalized quantifiers), deictic phenomena, etc., which significantly complicate matters. We return to these unresolved issues in Section 7.</Paragraph>
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