The concept of definiteness and its application to nominal reference resolution with particular emphasis on German

This dissertation is a study of the category of definiteness in the light of research on mental spaces and frames. We propose an algorithm for nominal reference resolution that uses information provided by determiners in a text.;Chapter I introduces the problems associated with the concept of definiteness and its applicability in Natural Language Processing. Chapter 2 presents both semantic and syntactic aspects of the current research on definiteness, as well as modern approaches to automated reference resolution.;In Chapter 3 we discuss an ontology suitable for a description of determiners and formulate a set of eight uniform rules for the use of the definite, indefinite and zero articles in German and English. Further, we evaluate applicability of the formulated rules to sample sentences and text fragments from German and English prose.;Chapter 4 presents an algorithm for nominal reference resolution. The algorithm uses the definiteness value of each determiner phrase to guide the search for its referent. We also describe and evaluate the performance of an automated reference resolution system based on implementation of the reference resolution algorithm. The system includes a unification parser that uses a set of syntactic and semantic features to extract information relevant for reference resolution.;Chapter 5 demonstrates application of the proposed approach to text fragments from all three major historical variants of the German language. Analysis of occurrences of dër (thër) with nouns referring to default elements of frames shows that the simple demonstrative pronoun was used to express definiteness—and not anaphora or deixis alone—already in Old High German. We also demonstrate that the presented rules can be successfully used in the analysis of Middle High German and Early New High German data.