Dissolution of Centering Theory Based on Game Theory and Its Empirical Verification

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Centering theory is to explain relations among focus, anaphora, and cohesion.However, it fails to address any general principle behind anaphora.Moreover, although the salience of discourse entities plays a critical role in centering theory, it is not defined as an objectively measurable quantity.On the other hand, Hasida et a1.(1995, 1996) propose <I>meaning game</I> as a model of intentional communication, and claim that it derives centering theory, but this claim has not yet been verified on the basis of substantial linguistic data.In this paper, we formulate salience in terms of reference probability (as measurable quantity).Under this formulation, meaning game derives preferences subsuming two rules of centering theory.Those preferences, entailing stronger predictions than centering theory, are verified based on a Japanese corpus. Meaning game is hence a better working hypothesis than the centering theory in terms of both theoretical clarity and predictive power.Domain-specific accounts such as centering theory are probably not necessary to explain anaphora, focus, and so on.
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