--- title: "The Penn Treebank: Annotating Predicate Argument Structure — Marcus 1994" description: "The paper describes a second annotation scheme for the Penn Treebank, written to make predicate-argument… 11 references, cited by 314 papers here." authors: ["Mitchell Marcus", "Grace Kim", "Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz", "Robert MacIntyre", "Ann Bies", "Mark Ferguson", "Karen Katz", "Britta Schasberger"] year: 1994 venue: "Human Language Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Plainsboro, New Jersey, March 8-11, 1994" source: "https://aclanthology.org/H94-1020/" doi: "10.3115/1075812.1075835" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marcus-1994-penn-treebank-annotating-predicate-argument/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marcus-1994-penn-treebank-annotating-predicate-argument/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1994](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1994/) / The Penn Treebank: Annotating Predicate Argument Structure # The Penn Treebank: Annotating Predicate Argument Structure **Authors:** [Mitchell Marcus](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/mitchell-marcus/), Grace Kim, [Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/mary-ann-marcinkiewicz/) et al. · **Year:** 1994 · **Venue:** Human Language Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Plainsboro, New Jersey, March 8–11, 1994 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/H94-1020](https://aclanthology.org/H94-1020/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) — summary only [**742** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2093647425) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [**314** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marcus-1994-penn-treebank-annotating-predicate-argument/cited-by/) of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read · [Human Language Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Plainsboro, New Jersey, March 8-11, 1994](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/H94-1/) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/H94-1020/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/H94-1020.pdf) - [DOI 10.3115/1075812.1075835](https://doi.org/10.3115/1075812.1075835) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2093647425) **Authors (8)** 1. [Mitchell Marcus](https://openalex.org/A5111565465) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1734174) · h 27 · 13,491 citations · 82 works 2. [Grace Kim](https://openalex.org/A5100403882) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4603-9448) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2116073558) · h 67 · 22,624 citations · 571 works 3. [Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz](https://openalex.org/A5125538884) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2063206) · h 1 · 742 citations · 3 works 4. Robert MacIntyre [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/33353168) 5. [Ann Bies](https://openalex.org/A5025999439) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/3212973) · h 16 · 2,122 citations · 130 works 6. [Mark Ferguson](https://openalex.org/A5047206830) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2054785529) · h 3 · 1,050 citations · 9 works 7. [Karen Katz](https://openalex.org/A5001101467) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6724-3993) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2065702818) · h 12 · 1,468 citations · 52 works 8. [Britta Schasberger](https://openalex.org/A5053520612) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2537676) · h 3 · 765 citations · 4 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The paper describes a second annotation scheme for the Penn Treebank, written to make predicate-argument structure recoverable from the trees. It makes related phenomena consistent, adds co-indexed null elements for wh-movement, passives and infinitival subjects, gives a mechanism for discontinuous constituents, and tags arguments and adjuncts with function labels such as -SBJ, -TMP and -PRD. Small clauses map to a single predication, so that "consider Kris a fool" yields one predicate. The authors report an eight-month effort by about ten annotators to write the stylebook, and they plan 10% overlapped material to measure consistency. The paper gives no accuracy figures; its value is the scheme and the stated goal of evaluating parsers on predicate-argument structure. ## For Mova - I1. Null-element loss probe: in `en/src/convert.rs`, count how many gold arguments are reached only through co-indexed traces, and whether the mova dialect keeps them (MISC or the derived layer); report the share of lost relations per bank (test only, PTB is NC). - I2. Small clauses and predicate tags as a `treeagree` check: count gate violations for the -PRD style case (predicate of a small clause) and for -TMP adjuncts, on teacher silver with and without the rule. - I3. Overlap protocol for `annot`: a fixed 10% double-annotated slice of the school corpus, with agreement reported per relation, as the paper plans for its stylebook. The code is `en/src/convert.rs`, `treebanks/en/` and `annot`. The chapters are [languages/en/23-complementation.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/23-complementation/) (small clauses and control), `25-relative-clauses.md` (wh-traces) and `28-voice-and-passive.md` (passive subjects). Measure first: how many gold relations in the PTB conversion depend on a trace, since that count sets the cost of recovering them. ## Institutions [🎓**University of Pennsylvania** Philadelphia · United States 143 works · 56,645 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-pennsylvania/) Topics[Treebanks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/treebanks/) · [Semantic role labeling](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semantic-role-labeling/) ## Cite Cite as Mitchell Marcus, Grace Kim, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, Robert MacIntyre, Ann Bies, Mark Ferguson, Karen Katz and Britta Schasberger. 1994. The Penn Treebank: Annotating Predicate Argument Structure. Human Language Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Plainsboro, New Jersey, March 8-11, 1994. The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.3115/1075812.1075835](https://doi.org/10.3115/1075812.1075835) ```bibtex @inproceedings{marcus1994penn, title = {{The Penn Treebank: Annotating Predicate Argument Structure}}, author = {Mitchell Marcus, Grace Kim, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, Robert MacIntyre, Ann Bies, Mark Ferguson, Karen Katz and Britta Schasberger}, booktitle = {Human Language Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Plainsboro, New Jersey, March 8-11, 1994}, year = {1994}, doi = {10.3115/1075812.1075835}, url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/1075812.1075835} } ``` - [← previous WordNet: A Lexical Database for English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/miller-1994-wordnet/) - [next → An Algorithm for Pronominal Anaphora Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lappin-1994-algorithm-pronominal-anaphora-resolution/) - [↑ back to papers of 1994](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1994/) ## References 11 references, 2 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Black, E., Abney, S., Flickenger, F., Grishman, R., Harrison, P., Hindle, D., Ingria, R., Jelinek, F., Klavans, J., Liberman, M., Marcus, M., Roukos, S., Santorini, B., and Strzalkowski, T., 1991. A procedure for quantitatively comparing the syntactic coverage of English grammars. In Proceedings of the Fourth DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, February 1991. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Black%2C+E%2E%2C+Abney%2C+S%2E%2C+Flickenger%2C+F%2E%2C+Grishman%2C+R%2E%2C+Harrison%2C+P%2E%2C+Hindle%2C+D%2E%2C+Ingria%2C+R%2E%2C+Jelinek%2C+F%2E%2C+Klavans%2C+J%2E%2C+Liberman%2C+M%2E%2C+Marcus%2C+M%2E%2C+Roukos%2C+S%2E%2C+Santorini%2C+B%2E%2C+and+Strzalkowski%2C+T%2E%2C+1991%2E+A+p) 2. Black, E., Jelinek, F., Lafferty, J., Magerman, D.M., Mercer, R., and Roukos, S. 1992. Towards history-based grammars: Using Richer Models for Probabilistic parsing. In Proceedings of the $1th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Black%2C+E%2E%2C+Jelinek%2C+F%2E%2C+Lafferty%2C+J%2E%2C+Magerman%2C+D%2EM%2E%2C+Mercer%2C+R%2E%2C+and+Roukos%2C+S%2E+1992%2E+Towards+history%2Dbased+grammars%3A+Using+Richer+Models+for+Probabilistic+parsing%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+%241th+Annual+) 3. Brill, E., Marcus, M., 1992. Automatically acquiring phrase structure using distributional analysis. In Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, February 199~. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Brill%2C+E%2E%2C+Marcus%2C+M%2E%2C+1992%2E+Automatically+acquiring+phrase+structure+using+distributional+analysis%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+DARPA+Speech+and+Natural+Language+Workshop%2C+February+199%7E%2E) 4. Brill, E., 1993. Automatic grammar induction and parsing free text: a transformation-based approach. In Proceedings of the 31th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Brill%2C+E%2E%2C+1993%2E+Automatic+grammar+induction+and+parsing+free+text%3A+a+transformation%2Dbased+approach%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+31th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%2E) 5. Francis, W., 1964. A standard sample of present-day English for use with digital computers. Report to the U.S Office of Education on Cooperative Research Project No. E-OOZ Brown University, Providence. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Francis%2C+W%2E%2C+1964%2E+A+standard+sample+of+present%2Dday+English+for+use+with+digital+computers%2E+Report+to+the+U%2ES+Office+of+Education+on+Cooperative+Research+Project+No%2E+E%2DOOZ+Brown+University%2C+Providence) 6. Francis, W. and Ku~era, H., 1982. Frequency analysis of English usage. Lexicon and grammar. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. The computational analysis of English. A corpus-based approach. Longman, London. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Francis%2C+W%2E+and+Ku%7Eera%2C+H%2E%2C+1982%2E+Frequency+analysis+of+English+usage%2E+Lexicon+and+grammar%2E+Houghton+Mifflin%2C+Boston%2E+The+computational+analysis+of+English%2E+A+corpus%2Dbased+approach%2E+Longman%2C+London%2E) 7. Garside, R., Leech, G., and Sampson, G., 1987. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Garside%2C+R%2E%2C+Leech%2C+G%2E%2C+and+Sampson%2C+G%2E%2C+1987%2E) 8. Hindle, D., and Rooth, M., 1993. Structural Ambiguity and Lexical Relations. Computational Linguistics, Vol 19. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hindle-1993-structural-ambiguity-lexical-relations/) 9. D. Magerman and M. Marcus, 1991. P E A R L - - A Probabilistic Chart Parser, In Proceedings, Fifth Conference of the European Chapter off the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL), Berlin, April 1991. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=D%2E+Magerman+and+M%2E+Marcus%2C+1991%2E+P+E+A+R+L+%2D+%2D+A+Probabilistic+Chart+Parser%2C+In+Proceedings%2C+Fifth+Conference+of+the+European+Chapter+off+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics+%28EACL%29%2C+Berlin%2C+) 10. Marcus, M., Santorini, B., Marcinkiewicz, M.A., 1993. Building a large annotated corpus of English: the Penn Treebank. Computational Linguistics, Vol 19. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marcus-1993-building-large-annotated-corpus-english/) 11. Quirk, R., Greenbanm, S., Leech, G., and Svaxtvik, J., 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language, Longman, London. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Quirk%2C+R%2E%2C+Greenbanm%2C+S%2E%2C+Leech%2C+G%2E%2C+and+Svaxtvik%2C+J%2E%2C+1985%2E+A+comprehensive+grammar+of+the+English+language%2C+Longman%2C+London%2E)