Syntactic Structured Framework for Resolving Reflexive Anaphora in Urdu Discourse Using Multilingual NLP

• Jamal A. Nasir,
• Zia Ud. Din,

Vol. 15, No. 4, April 30, 2021
10.3837/tiis.2021.04.012, Download Paper (Free):

• Natural Language Processing
• Reflexive Anaphora Resolution
• Linguistic Rules
• Urdu Anaphora
• Anaphor
• Referent

Abstract

In wide-ranging information society, fast and easy access to information in language of one’s choice is indispensable, which may be provided by using various multilingual Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. Natural language text contains references among different language elements, called anaphoric links. Resolving anaphoric links is a key problem in NLP. Anaphora resolution is an essential part of NLP applications. Anaphoric links need to be properly interpreted for clear understanding of natural languages. For this purpose, a mechanism is desirable for the identification and resolution of these naturally occurring anaphoric links. In this paper, a framework based on Hobbs syntactic approach and a system developed by Lappin & Leass is proposed for resolution of reflexive anaphoric links, present in Urdu text documents. Generally, anaphora resolution process takes three main steps: identification of the anaphor, location of the candidate antecedent(s) and selection of the appropriate antecedent. The proposed framework is based on exploring the syntactic structure of reflexive anaphors to find out various features for constructing heuristic rules to develop an algorithm for resolving these anaphoric references. System takes Urdu text containing reflexive anaphors as input, and outputs Urdu text with resolved reflexive anaphoric links. Despite having scarcity of Urdu resources, our results are encouraging. The proposed framework can be utilized in multilingual NLP (m-NLP) applications.

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