A study of discourse anaphora in scientific abstracts

Natural language texts are used extensively in a range of information science tasks. Such use requires increased attention to discourse level linguistic phenomena which have the potential for impact on these tasks. One such device, anaphoric reference, was investigated in a frequently used text type, namely, scientific abstracts. Descriptive data on the extent of use of discourse anaphora in abstracts was gathered and rules for distinguishing anaphoric functioning of terms were compiled and tested. Results show a mean use of 3.67 functioning anaphors per abstract in a random sample of 600 abstracts from two databases. Testing of rules indicates high feasibility of future algorithmic recognition of anaphoric uses of terms. © 1987 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.