Resolution of Difficult Pronouns Using the ROSS Method

Abstract: A new natural language understanding method for disambiguation of difficult pronouns is described. Difficult pronouns are those pronouns for which a level of world or domain knowledge is needed in order to perform anaphoral or other types of resolution. Resolution of difficult pronouns may in some cases require a prior step involving the application of inference to a situation that is represented by the natural language text. A general method is described: it performs entity resolution and pronoun resolution. An extension to the general pronoun resolution method performs inference as an embedded commonsense reasoning method. The general method and the embedded method utilize features of the ROSS representational scheme; in particular the methods use ROSS ontology classes and the ROSS situation model. The overall method is a working solution that solves the following Winograd schemas: a) trophy and suitcase, b) person lifts person, c) person pays detective, and d) councilmen and demonstrators.