Zero Pronoun Resolution in Japanese Discourse Based on Centering Theory

Recently there have been a number of works that model the zero pronoun resolution with the concept called 'center.' However, the usefulness of the previous centering frameworks has not fully evaluated with naturally occurring discourses. Furthermore, the previous centering theory has handled only the phenomena in successive simple sentences and has not adequately addressed the way to handle complex sentences that are prevalent in naturally occurring discourses. In this paper, we present a method to handle complex sentences with the centering theory and describe our framework that identifies the autecedents of zero pronouns in naturally occurring Japanese discourses. We also present the evaluation of our framework with real discourses.