Coreference in simplified German: Linguistic features and challenges of automatic annotation

Sarah Jablotschkin, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski, Heike Zinsmeister


Abstract
In this paper, we analyse coreference annotation of the German language, focussing on the phenomenon of simplification, that is, the tendency to use words and constructions that are assumed to be easier perceived, understood, or produced. Simplification is one of the tools used by language users in order to optimise communication effectively. We are interested in how simplification is reflected in coreference in two different language products exposed to the phenomena of simplification: simultaneous interpreting and Easy German. For this, we automatically annotate simplified texts with coreference. We then evaluate the outputs of automatic annotation. In addition, we also look into quantitative distributions of some coreference features. Our findings show that although the language products under analysis diverge in terms of simplification driving factors, they share some specific coreference features. We also show that this specificity may cause annotation errors in simplified language, e.g. in non-nominal or split antecedents.
Anthology ID:
2025.crac-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Models of Reference, Anaphora and Coreference
Month:
November
Year:
2025
Address:
Suzhou, China
Editors:
Maciej Ogrodniczuk, Michal Novak, Massimo Poesio, Sameer Pradhan, Vincent Ng
Venue:
CRAC
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
12–23
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.crac-1.2/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Sarah Jablotschkin, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski, and Heike Zinsmeister. 2025. Coreference in simplified German: Linguistic features and challenges of automatic annotation. In Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Models of Reference, Anaphora and Coreference, pages 12–23, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Coreference in simplified German: Linguistic features and challenges of automatic annotation (Jablotschkin et al., CRAC 2025)
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https://aclanthology.org/2025.crac-1.2.pdf