Historical Roots of Dependency Grammar

Svetoslav Marinov
sedalti99@yahoo.com

Introduction

In this paper we will attempt to trace the historical roots of Dependency

Grammar (DG). The modern notion of DG is generally attributed to the
work of Tesni`ere (1959), but many of its underlying principles can be traced
back as early as 400 B.C. While no grammatical approach until after the
middle of twentieth century can truely be called DG as it is with the work of
Melcuk (1988), for example, we will identify only those ideas which have a
correspondence and are common for the mojority of present-day DG frameworks. In addition, since our interest lie within the are of Computational
Linguistics (CL), we will concentrate almost entirely on DG ideas relevent for
the field of CL and more precisely the dependency-based syntactic parsing of
natural languages. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the
present-day definition of dependency; Sections 3 through 7 discuss various
dependency ideas in chronological order; Section 8 concludes.

Formalization and Definition of Dependency Relations

The basic notions in DG are that of a head (or governor) and its dependent two words in a sentence, and the binary relation that holds between
them. Zwicky (1985) gives six properties which can differentiate the head
(H) from its dependent (D) in a given construction (C). These criteria have
a mixed character some are semantic and some are syntactic properties.
The following list is based on Hudson (1990, pp. 106-7), who argues that
heads in many different constructions are congruent with one or several of
those properties:
1. C refers to a hyponym of what H refers to. E.g., big book refers to a
kind of book.
2. The semantic relation between H and D involves different part of their
respective meanings: Hs sense but Ds referent. E.g., in picture of a
girl, the referent of D (a girl) defines the sense of H (picture).
1

3. Each dependent D takes its position from H. E.g., in give(H) me(D)

this(D), we cannot have other word orderings, i.e. *give this me or
*me this give. This is a language specific property.
4. H is referred to in any rule which restricts the relative position of any
D. E.g., heads may always precede dependents in certain languages.
5. The external syntactic relations of C are all due to the properties of
H. E.g., the relation between should not have written and this letter is
due to the properties of write, which needs an argument, and letter,
being able to serve as an argument to a verb.
6. The range of possible complements Ds is determined by H. E.g., intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verbs subcategorize for no, one
or two obligatory arguments.
Melcuk (1988) gives the four properties of the binary syntactic relations
between the word forms of a sentence. Such binary relations are sufficient
to represent the syntactic structures of the sentences. Their properties are
as follows:
1. Asymmetric: if X Y , then (X Y ).
2. Irreflexive: X
3. Intransitive: if X Y and Y Z, then (X Z)
4. Labelled: Syntactic relations should be distinguishable from one another: X r1 Y and Y r2 Z, etc.
With these properties in hand we can define the (syntactic) dependency
structures and (syntactic) Dependency Trees as follows (Melcuk, 1988; Kruijff, 2002):
There is only one independent element, usually called root. All other
elements are directly or indirectly connected to it.
Every node must have at most one head. This is obligatory for Melcuks
surface syntactic structures, as well as the representations in many syntactic treebanks. But Melcuks deep syntactic or semantic structures
and Hudsons Word Grammar allow for multi-headedness.
The structure can be represented as a connected (acyclic) directed
labelled graph. If dependents are allowed to have multiple heads
then we can speak of graph. Otherwise it is more common to say
that the structure is a tree. As for labelling the arcs, there are two
predominant approaches - either to use more surface syntactic labels
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(e.g. subject, object) or to use a more semantically oriented labels (e.g.

agent, patient). Finally, Hudsons Word Grammar allows for cyclic
graphs.
Structures may be projective or non-projective. In the former case
heads and dependents are adjacent, i.e. there are no crossing arcs or no
arcs covering the root node. In the latter case the adjacency constraint
is relaxed and arcs are allowed to cross or cover the root node. This
is a more plausible scenario for free word order languages.
The nodes of the tree are usually the word forms occurring in the
sentence, there are no intermediate nodes, nor constituents.
The following syntactic dependency analysis exemplifies the points just
described. The rootnode is underlined, the relations between the words are
labelled1 and directed.2 Every word has exactly one head but each head
word may have more than one dependent.
inf.obj
prep.obj
dir.obj
det
subj adv
(1)

Whom can you

see

in the park?

In the sections that follow we will concentrate on the following points, which
are central and ubiquitous to most of present-day DG frameworks as well as
in the field of syntactic dependency parsing.
Syntactic analysis in terms of word-to-word relations
Head/dependet or governor/governee dichotomy among the words
Projectivity/non-projectivity of analysis
Rootedness and single-headedness
Labelled word-to-word relations

The Grammar of P
an.ini (ca. 400-500 B.C.)

The earliest references to dependency-based analysis is often attributed to

Pan.inis grammar of Sanskrit, ca. 400-500 B.C., (Kruijff, 2002). According
to Kiparsky (2002), Pan.inian grammar consists of four parts: As..ta
dhy
ayi,

describing the grammatical rules; Sivas

utras, describing the phonological
1

These labels are arbitrary and serve an illustrative purpose only.

Different DG frameworks may assume the opposite direction for some of these relations
and a different root node (i.e. see), which may lead to a projective dependency graph.
2

segments; Dh
atup
a.tha, describing about 2000 verbal roots and their morphological and syntactic properties; Gan.ap
a.tha, a list of 261 lexical items.
Some of the 4000 rules in the As..ta
dhy
ay part of Pan.inis grammar deal
with the sentence structure. In this view of syntax there are no movements, deletions or transformations, deep and surface structure. His system
is a derivational one and goes through a number of levels but these deal
with the correct morphological and phonological realization of elements as
well as the roles and relations between the elements. The derivation of
a sentece starts from the level of meaning and ends with its phonological
form (Itkonen, 1991). The lexicon contains verbal and nominal stems. The
derivation is instantiated by choosing items from the lexicon and deciding
on the relations between the verbal root and the nominals. These relations
or roles are called k
arakas and according to Kiparsky (2002) there are six of
them Agent (kartr), Goal (karman), Recipient (sam
ana), Instrument
. prad
(karan.a), Locative (adhikaran.a) and Source (ap
ad
ana). The well-formedness
of the sentence stems from the proper applications of the rules, so that each
nominal is assigned a role, discernible in some morphological element. In this
respect the k
arakas mediate between meaning and morphosyntactic structure in the following way (Kiparsky, 2002, p.16):
Every k
araka must be expressed by a morphological element
No k
araka can be expressed by more than one morphological element
Every morphological element must express something
The following Sanskrit example demonstrates the syntactic structure of a
sentence, where the morphological elements expressing the k
arakas are boxed
and subscripted with the respective role. Since the instantiation/expression
of the roles happens in relation to the verb, hence the links between them.
(2)

kr.s.n.ah. paca ti
Krishna cooks

AGEN T

odan am
rice

GOAL

On the other hand, Itkonen (1991) illustrates the relations between the elements in a sentence at the level of meaning as (3) and at the level of
form as (4). In the latter case we have substituted the nominals with their
case-marking. The arrows represent the semantic and syntactic determination/governance respectively.
(3)

Agent Patient Goal Action

(4)

Nominative Accusative Dative (Verb)

The semantic analysis of a causative construction in terms of governance

is represented by Itkonen in the following way, where the agent and the
respective action are coindexed with superscripts:
(5)

Agent2 Action2 Action1 Agent1 Patient

It would be too far-fetched to induce any dependency-based syntactic analysis, in its current incarnation, from the grammar of Pan.ini. What is relevant for the present task of looking at dependency ideas in retrospect can
be summed up as follows:
There are binary relations between a verb root and nominals, as well
as between nominals (Itkonen, 1991; Kiparsky, 2002).
The action, as expressed by the aspect of the verb, is central (Itkonen,
1991).
There are six (semantic/syntactic) roles which describe the binary relations (Misra, 1966; Itkonen, 1991; Kiparsky, 2002).
There can be only one role per nominal but a verb may enter into
relation with zero to six nominals (Itkonen, 1991; Kiparsky, 2002).
From the above summary we find support for notions like binary relations, rootedness (the action/verb being the root), labelled relations (i.e.
k
arakas) and single-headedness. It is interesing to note that at the level of
semantic dependency in the Meaning-Text Theory (Melcuk, 1988), there
are six actants or relations. These are labelled with digits 1 to 6.

The Greek and Roman Linguistic Tradition (100

B.C. V c. A.D.)

In discussing the history of the notion of dependency, Percival (1990) makes

the distinction between syntactic and semantic dependency. The former is
applicable in the cases when a class of elements occur only when members
of another class are present. The latter describes the case when some words
exist to specify or circumscribe the meaning of other words. Based on this
dichotomy, he observes that while there is no evidence about the idea of syntactic dependency, the semantic one was recognized by the Greek authors.
As such he points out the definition of the eight different word-classes or
parts of speech (i.e. those discussed in the Techne, ca. 100 B.C.). An
interesting point of view put forward by Percival is the two separate views
of word-classes which existed in this period. One by the logicians (Plato,
Aristotle, etc.), concerns the analysis of a proposition into its logical parts.
5

Another by the grammarians eight parts of speech in a sentence. The

former started off with just two word-classes nouns and verbs, but later
recognized a class of words like all, every, some, no and another class like if
and and.
The works of the Stoics (ca. 300-150 B.C.) has to be mentioned as well,
since it is there where one for the first time in the Greek linguistic tradition
finds support for the ideas of dependecy. The Stoics were concerned with
the analysis of lekt
on (the thing said) (Lepschy, 1994). A predicate like
gr
aphei (writes) is considered an incomplete lekt
on and therefore requires
a nominal of some kind which will perform the act of writing. Only then it
becomes a complete lekt
on, or an ax
oma. Ineke Sluiter in (Auroux et al.,
2000) writes the following: The predicate was called an incomplete lekt
on
with a number of slots that need filling ... [p. 378] and ... they [the Stoics]
describe interaction of bodies as ocurring in relation to lekta... [p. 384].
In the works of Apollonius Dyscolus (II c. A.D.) and Priscianus (VI
c. A.D.) one finds a more straightforward reference to the notion of dependency. In their view, adverbs complement or diminish the meaning of
the verb and are attached to verbs. While adverbs require the verb, verbs
do not necessarily require and adverb (Percival, 1990). Both of the authors
distinguish between major (verbs and nouns) and minor word-classes, where
the latter serve the purpose to support or circumscribe the former. Apollonius, for example, regarded some words as naturally more closely related
than others. Prepositions preceded nouns and had to be construed with
them. Articles related to nouns and nouns relate to verbs. Conjunctions
could not bind a noun and a verb. In some of these relations there are
clear indications of what we now call dependency. (Lepschy, 1994, p. 99).
Further support for the notion of dependency is found in the writings of
Priscian. According to him, words (or lexis, diction) are the smallest part of
a connected sentence (Lepschy, 1994). One word is put in construction with
(construitur cum) or requires (exigit) another (Covington, 1984). Given that
a complex sentence can be diminished to a very simple one, consisting only
of a noun and a verb (6), the question which worried the grammarians was
which of the two elements is logically prior. Ancient grammarians generally
considered the noun as prior to the verb but many Greek and Latin verbs
in first and second person singular mark morphologically the subject. Both
Percival (1990) and Lepschy (1994) find support for another view among
the grammarians that of the verb being prior to the noun since one could
omit the subject in such cases.
(6)

a.
b.

idem
homo lapsus
heu hodie concidit
the same man having slipped alas today fell down
homo concidit
man fell down

The logician Boethius (ca. 480-524/6 A.D.) is the first person who coins
a special term for the supportive role of the minor word-classes (Percival,
1990). His use of the term determinatio is generic and refers to the relation
of all minor classes with respect to the major one.
To sum up, many of the ideas discussed in the works of Ancient grammarians and logicians can be subsumed under the modern understanding of
dependency. These include rootedness (i.e. the prior of the noun and the
verb), head-modifier relations (e.g. the adverb-verb relation), analysis in
terms of words only as well as a term for the head-dependent relation (i.e.
determinacio).

The Arabic Linguistic Tradition VIII c.

DG type of syntactic analyses are found in the Arab Linguistic tradition with
its chief luminary the grammarian Sbawaihi (d. ca. 793) and his seminal
work known as Al-Kit
ab (=The Book) (Itkonen, 1991). The need to give
explanation for the nominal inflections (i.e., the existence of Nominative,
Accusative and Genitive case) brings about a basic cause-effect scheme (7)
(Itkonen, 1991, p. 132).
(7)

b) A

a) construction
A
cause

B
effect

Following Owens (1988), Itkonen calles A a governor of B and B a dependent of A. This scheme gives explanation to clear-cut cases where a verb is
governing a noun in Nominative or Accusative, or a preposition governing a
noun in Genitive (8) and ultimately covers cases where a non-overt element
governs syntactically another element (9).
(8)

V N-nom,

(9)

(=A)

V N-acc,

Prep N-gen

B-{case/mode}

A simple example of the governance relations just described is given in the

Arabic sentence in (10) (Itkonen, 1991, p. 135).
(10)

d.arab-tu-hu
hit-I-he
I hit him

It has to be mentioned that Sbawaihi recognized only three parts of

speech nouns (including also adjectives, pronouns, active and passive participles), verbs and particles. Verbs are primarily governors but can be governed by particles. Particles can be governors of nouns (i.e. prepositions)
or verbs, or can be non-governors, but they can never be governed. Nouns
can never govern. The governor-dependent scheme proposed by Sbawaihi
accounts for many verbal sentences, with general principle being that A
unit may govern more than one unit; but it can be governed only by one
unit. (Itkonen, 1991, p. 136).
The nominal sentences (i.e. noun + noun) are not analysed explicitly in
terms of dependency but rather in terms of Topic-Comment (11).
(11)

Zaydun rajulun
Topic Comment
Zayd is a man

Yet (11) can receive a dependency analysis by postulating a covert auxiliary

as in (12):
(12)

rajulan
kana zaydun
was ZaydN OM manACC
Zayd was a man

While authors like Owens (1988) finds support only for dependency analyses
in the Arab grammarians, others (e.g. Carter (1973)) defend the idea that
the syntactic analyses of both nominal and verbal sentences as proposed
by Sbawaihi and his followers are in essence Bloomfieldian type Immediate
Constituent analyses. Itkonen (1991), on the other hand, takes the moderate
view of assuming that Sbawaihi and followers operated with the two notions
we now call dependency and constituency, all depending on the type of
structure at hand.
From dependency point of view what is problematic in the Arabic syntactic theory are constructions involving non-accusative complements of the
verb. These will be introduced by prepositions (13).
(13)

marar-tu bi zayd-in
passed-I by Zayd-Gen
I passed Zayd

As we already meantioned above, prepositions can govern nouns but they

cannot be governed. The proper name Zayd is the complement of the verb,
but it cannot be governed by it because the name is introduced by a preposition bi. Such sentences did not receive a coherent treatment (Itkonen,
1991).

Following Owens (1988) and Itkonen (1991) it can be said that the Arab
grammarians were the proponents of the modern definition of dependency.
They differentiated between c a
mil=head and mac m
ul=dependent. Singleheadedness (i.e. every element can have only one governor) and projectivity
(i.e. no crossing-arcs) were principles explicitly present in the analyses by
the grammarians. As for the proposing by Sbawaihi of a covert element
governing the nouns in an N+N construction, Itkonen (1991) considers this
to support a transformational grammar approach. However, Melcuk (1988)
similarly assumes an empty category/element to be the head in certain N+N
case (e.g. Ya vrac=I (am) a doctor (Russian)).

The Modistae (ca. 12601310)

In the European Linguistic tradition the earliest examples of DG-like syntactic analyses can be attributed to the Modistae (ca. 1260-1310) (Covington,
1984). The modistic grammar (or grammatica speculativa) described how
linking words together can build up whole sentences. The formation of the
sentence is divided into three successive steps constructio, establishing
links between the words; congruitas, application of well-formedness conditions on the links; perfectio, a final check on whether this is a complete
sentence (Covington, 1984). Any word-word relation is also classified as being transitive or intransitive, depending on whether the two words pertain
to the same real-world referent. Within each construction there are two
grammatical relations of primum to secundum and of dependens to terminans. In the former relation secundum presupposes the presence of primum.
As for the letter, a dependens is an unsaturated element, while a terminans is the element which saturates (Lepschy, 1994). Covington (1984)
claims that the dependensterminans relation is an extention of Petrus Helias concept of regimen, which according to Law (2003) is the concept of
government, where one word forces another to be in a particular form. In
transitive constructions the two sets of relations run in the same direction
while in intransitive constructions in the opposite. These can be illustrated
by the following analysis of a Latin sentence in (14), (Covington, 1984),
which means A man very swift on his feet runs through the forest. The
dashes lines exemplify the depenedens-terminans relations, and the rest the
primum-secundum relations.
(14)

Vir valde celer pedibus currit per silvam

In addition, the terms suppositum (=subject) and appositum (=predicate)

were used to denote the syntactic funtion of the two parts of a basic sentence,
the noun and the verb (Robins, 1997). For a construction to be well-formed
9

in the three successive stages of constructio, congruitas and perfectio, the

following conditions had to be fullfilled there should be agreement or compatibility of the modes of signifying or the morphemes of the elements in a
construction; every dependens should have a terminans; a suppositum and
appositum of finite mood should appear in the sentence.
Covington (1984) and Robins (1997) explicitly point out that the dependensterminans relation should not be confused with the present-day notion of
dependency. For Covington (1984) the primum-secundum relations correspond the current notion of dependency. Still one big difference with modern
dependency theories is the fact that the root node of a dependency graph
will typically be the subject nominal for the Modiestae, while according to
the present-day formalization this should be the finite verb in the clause.
For the Modist Martin of Dacia (d. 1304) there was only one primum
constructibilia in the whole sentence and this was the subject (Covington,
1984). Later on, this idea was replace with a model where in every construction primum and secundum where identified, although the criteria for
differentiating between the two were not enirely clear according to Covington. The verb for example was considered secundum in a subject-verb
construction but primum in the verb-object construction. Substances were
considered prior to their attributes and therefore a primum.
Certain constructions, however, posited problems for the Modistae. These
included cases like coordination and subordinate clauses, where it is difficult
to identify a single element as being a primum.
The two sets of relations, that of primum to secundum and of dependens to terminans, receive a contradictory interpretation in the literature.
Percival (1990), for example, considers the dependens-terminans dichotomy
to correspond to the modern notion of dependent-head asymmetry. He also
considers this relation to be another way of capturing Boethius notion of
determination.
From what we have said about the syntactic theory of the Modistae
it is clear that DG-like analyses of sentences were central. Some form of
head-dependent dichotomy was present as well as the idea of root node in
the sentence. Depending on which of the two relations we assume to refer
to dependency, we may either find support for single-headedness (primumsecundum) or not (dependens-terminans).

Between the Modistae and Tesni`

ere

Between the middle of the 14th and the middle of the 20th century, there
does not seem to be any single grammatical framework that relates to DG,
as it is with the frameworks reviewed in the last few sections. The only
references we find in the literature are based on Kruijff (2002) and Percival
(1990).

10

 The idea of semantic specification (determinatio) remains in use while

the term dependentia falls out of use.
The Port Royal grammarians are attributed the notion of dependent
clause.
The French grammarian Claude Buffier (early 18th c.) is fathered with
the notions of modifiers and modification.
Labbe Gabriel Girard (in his work from 1747) is considered the originator of the notion of complement.
` ements de syntaxe
In 1959, the central for DG work by Lucien Tesn`ere, El
structurale, was pubished posthumously. Unfortunately, it is not availble in
English, but a number of authors have summarized the main ideas in this
work, e.g. Melcuk (1988), Graffi (2001), Nivre (2005), to name just a few.
It falls outside the scope of this paper to include a review of Tesni`eres
ideas. It can be said that the DG ideas were largely neglected by the CL
community and did not receive any prominent role until the last 5-10 years.
Nowadays, however, the dependency-based representations have seen an increased attention from treebank creators, the syntactic parsing community
and recently also in the field of semantic role labelling.

Conclusion

In this paper we traced the roots of DG or rather those central notions which
are omnipresent in the different DG frameworks, as well as important for
syntactic dependency parsing. These were notions like: syntactic analysis
in terms of word-to-word relations; head-dependent dichotomy, rootedness,
(non-)projectivity, single-headedness and labelled word-relataions.
We showed that many of these ideas were present in the works of a
number of ancient grammarians. The three, most worthy of mentioning are
the Sanskrit grammar by Pan.ini, the Arabic grammar by Sbawaihi and the
works of the Modistae. Still, the interpretations of the ideas by the ancient
grammarians are not uniform. Some modern authors see sentence analyses
in terms of constituency, while others in terms of dependencies. We believe
that many of theories we just reviewed support the moderate view that the
notion of word-to-word relations in one form or another can be correlated
with the modern notion of dependency.

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