{"id":11704,"date":"2014-04-10T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=11704"},"modified":"2014-04-10T10:55:24","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T15:55:24","slug":"gender-is-the-least-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=11704","title":{"rendered":"Gender is the least of it"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.C. sends in this opening sentence from a story in his local (NZ) paper:<\/p>\n

The former lover of a murdered British jeweler was in his bed when he and his new girlfriend arrived at his villa on the Costa del Sol.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The players on the referential scorecard are:<\/p>\n

(1) the former lover
\n(2) a murdered British jeweler
\n(3) his<\/em> bed
\n(4) he
\n(5) his<\/em> new girlfriend
\n(6) his<\/em> villa<\/p>\n

In the end, the co-reference chain is easy: (2)=(3)=(4)=(5)=(6). And once you get that \"his bed\" belongs to the \"murdered British jeweler\", the rest of goes pretty smoothly.<\/p>\n

But it's natural to start (1)=(3) — \"the former lover […] was in his bed\", and then things get tangled up quickly. The former lover was in his bed when he and his girlfriend arrived at his villa? Say what?<\/p>\n

As a famous computational linguist once said to me, \"CoRef is hard. Or really, it's easy except when it isn't.\"<\/p>\n

The obligatory screenshot (OK, page image):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.C. sends in this opening sentence from a story in his local (NZ) paper: The former lover of a murdered British jeweler was in his bed when he and his new girlfriend arrived at his villa on the Costa del Sol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pragmatics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11709,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704\/revisions\/11709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}