Cross-document coreference: An approach to capturing coreference without context

Kristin Wright-Bettner, Martha Palmer, Guergana K Savova, Piet de Groen, Timothy A Miller

Abstract:

In this paper, we discuss a cross-document
coreference annotation schema that we
developed to further automatic extraction
of timelines in the clinical
domain. Lexical senses and coreference
choices are determined largely by context,
but cross-document work requires
reasoning across contexts that are not
necessarily coherent. We found that an
annotation approach that relies less on
context-guided annotator intuitions and
more on schematic rules was most
effective in creating meaningful and
consistent cross-document relations.