Coreference Resolution in a Modular, Entity-Centered Model

Aria Haghighi and Dan Klein 2010

Separate out different sources of information for coref:

  • Discourse cues -- more "closed-class"
  • Semantic cues -- more "open-class"

In prior work, semantic cues haven't been used as much (as successfully), partially because they're hard to learn (sparse).

In this work: use unsupervised learning to create a semantic model

Types of coref system:

  • Antecedent-based: link a single mention to a single antecedent phrase (eg pronouns)
  • Entity-based: maintain a set of salient entities, and link each mention to an entity.

In this work:

  • Use entity-based resolution to model semantic facts
  • Use antecedent-based model to model discourse facts

To model entities, we create an "entity type".. Each entity belongs to a type.

Model Outline

Semantic component:
  • Start with a set of types equation0.png, and use them to generate a set of entities E.
  • equation1.png
Discourse component:
  • Input = syntax tree X
  • Output is a set of assignments of indices to NPs.
  • equation2.png
Mention component:
  • Generates mentions M from E and Z
  • equation3.png

Semantic Module

  • Learn 16 entity types. E.g., person. Each type has:
    • Nominal (NN) head distribution: When it's a nominal, what heads does it have?
    • Proper (NNP) head distribution. Distribution over possible heads (for people: last names)
    • NSUBJ Gov head: What verbs does this entity type act as the subject for?

Entity = {T,L}:

  • T = type
  • L = {Proper Head(s), Nominal Head(s), Noun Modifier(s)}

E.g, L={[Obama], [president,leader], [Mr.,]}

Generative model:

  1. Choose a type
  2. Generate L
  • For each component of L (eg nominal heads):
    • Generate distribution of length of the list
    • Generate individual items in the list

Discourse Module

  • Input: tree T
  • Latent intermediate variable: A
  • Mention assignment

Basically each mention can either take a new entity assignment, or be co-referent with one of the entity assignments we've already chosen.

Use log-linear "antecedent affinity" functions to decide what we want to be antecedent with

Some syntactic configurations essentially "lock" coref. E.g., appositives force us to make two things co-referent. This can help us build a richer semantic model.

Mention Module

  • Mention is a noun phrase
  • We can extract property/word pairs from the NP. E.g.: <Proper Noun, Obama>, <NSubj Gov, said>

Some words that are associated with an entity are entity-specific. Others are licensed by the entity type (e.g., people say things).

T=Type; E=entity; M=mention

digraph1.gif

Training

Use staged training: fix some parameters, and learn others.

Type Creation

Start with some prototypes for each type

e,g,: person -> president, director; vehicle -> car, plane

Then learn the distribution of nominal heads, nsubj gov, etc.

Login