Inferential Realization Constraints on Functional Anaphora in the Centering Model

We present an inference-based text understanding methodology for the resolution of functional anaphora in the context of the centering model. A set of heuristic realization constraints is proposed, which incorporate language-independent conceptual criteria (based on the well-formedness and conceptual strength of role chains in a terminological knowledge base) and language-dependent information structure constraints (based on topic/comment or theme/rheme orderings). We state text-grammatical predicates for functional anaphora and then turn to the procedural aspects of their evaluation within the framework of an actor-based implementation of a lexically distributed text parser.