---
title: "Anaphora and Logical Form: On Formal Meaning Representations for Natural Language"
authors:
  - "Bonnie L. Webber"
  - "Raymond Reiter"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/25"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/0025.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1977
pages: "121-130"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Anaphora and Logical Form: On Formal Meaning Representations for Natural Language

Bonnie L. Webber, Raymond Reiter

*Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 121-130.

## Abstract

We argue, on general grounds, in favor of formal meaning representations for natural language. We then adopt, as a "forcing function" for the adequacy of such a representation, the problem of identifying the possible antecedents of anaphoric expressions. This suggests certain structural properties of a representation which facilitate the identification of possible antecedents. Given an appropriate representation language with such properties, it is then possible to deal with a surprisingly rich class of anaphora.