---
title: "Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection — Nivre 2016"
description: "The paper is the reference for the first UD release. 30 references, cited by 711 papers here."
authors: ["Joakim Nivre", "Marie-Catherine de Marneffe", "Filip Ginter", "Yoav Goldberg", "Jan Hajič", "Christopher D. Manning", "Ryan McDonald", "Slav Petrov", "Sampo Pyysalo", "Natalia Silveira", "Reut Tsarfaty", "Daniel Zeman"]
year: 2016
venue: "Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16)"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/L16-1262/"
doi: "10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8"
licence: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nivre-2016-universal-dependencies-v1-multilingual-treebank/"
---
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[home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2016](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2016/) / Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection

# Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection

**Authors:** [Joakim Nivre](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/joakim-nivre/), [Marie-Catherine de Marneffe](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/marie-catherine-de-marneffe/), [Filip Ginter](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/filip-ginter/) et al. · **Year:** 2016 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/L16-1262](https://aclanthology.org/L16-1262/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) (LREC proceedings) — summary only

[**1,028** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2579343286) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [**711** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nivre-2016-universal-dependencies-v1-multilingual-treebank/cited-by/) of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read · [Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16)](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/L16-1/) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/L16-1262/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/L16-1262.pdf)
- [DOI 10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8](https://doi.org/10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2579343286)

**Authors (12)**

1. [Joakim Nivre](https://openalex.org/A5077063699) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1720988) · h 60 · 16,139 citations · 333 works
2. [Marie-Catherine de Marneffe](https://openalex.org/A5112862689) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2241127) · h 31 · 8,612 citations · 82 works
3. [Filip Ginter](https://openalex.org/A5019929457) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5484-6103) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1694491) · h 36 · 7,535 citations · 202 works
4. [Yoav Goldberg](https://openalex.org/A5028476919) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6497-829X) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2089067) · h 59 · 23,282 citations · 401 works
5. [Jan Hajič](https://openalex.org/A5102738283) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3503-7730) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/144002335) · h 39 · 8,442 citations · 278 works
6. [Christopher D. Manning](https://openalex.org/A5046006076) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6155-649X) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/144783904) · h 139 · 180,101 citations · 770 works
7. [Ryan McDonald](https://openalex.org/A5022489655) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/143957226) · h 48 · 16,067 citations · 113 works
8. [Slav Petrov](https://openalex.org/A5062886906) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5505-4861) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1754497) · h 39 · 15,014 citations · 106 works
9. [Sampo Pyysalo](https://openalex.org/A5066925770) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6279-5000) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1708916) · h 47 · 28,686 citations · 178 works
10. [Natalia Silveira](https://openalex.org/A5113023938) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/145851426) · h 7 · 1,857 citations · 12 works
11. [Reut Tsarfaty](https://openalex.org/A5063283689) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6406-6568) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2799181) · h 24 · 2,832 citations · 217 works
12. [Daniel Zeman](https://openalex.org/A5061392927) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5791-6568) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/1771298) · h 27 · 4,467 citations · 163 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 is the reference for the first UD release. It sets out the design principles: dependency-based and lexicalist annotation, the recoverability principle (every syntactic word must map back to the raw text), content words as the backbone of the tree with function words as dependents, and a closed inventory of 17 POS tags, the morphological features, and 40 relations. Language-specific subtypes such as `acl:relcl` may be added and can always be stripped to the core label. The v1.2 release (November 2015) has 37 treebanks in 33 languages, with statistics per treebank (sentences, tokens, lemmas, features, relations). The authors also describe the CoNLL-U format, the validation tools and the enhanced representation, which was then used by only one treebank (Finnish).

## For Mova

- I1. `en ud-eval` with recoverability: check that the tokens of every output sentence rejoin exactly to the raw text, using the SpaceAfter and MISC conventions of `en/src/tok.rs`; measure the share of sentences that fail on EWT test, which should be zero.
- I2. `en ud-eval` core-label score: strip the subtype after the colon from both gold and output and report LAS beside the full LAS, to show how much of the loss comes from subtyping (`acl:relcl`, `nmod:poss`); measure the difference on EWT test.
- I3. `treeagree` gates: check that auxiliaries and copulas depend on a lexical predicate, which is the paper's design rule; measure how often `aux` or `cop` arcs point the other way in silver trees, per 1k sentences, with `treeagree check`.
- I4. `en/src/udreg.rs`: the paper's 17 POS tags and 40 relations are the historical base of the registry; check that the registry gate accepts every relation and feature the `en` crate writes, and report any that only exist in the mova dialect.

Touches `languages/en/20-syntax-overview`, `10-word-classes`, `12-pronouns-determiners-numerals` and `13-verbs`, and the `en` crate (`udreg.rs`, `tok.rs`, `ud.rs`), `tools/treeagree` and the `mova` dialect ([docs/dialect.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/docs/dialect/)). This is a background paper: its numbers are the UD v1 baseline, not Mova targets. Measure first the recoverability check (I1), because it is cheap and it fails loudly.

## Institutions

[🏢**Google** Mountain View · United States 272 works · 255,532 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/google/) · [🎓**Stanford University** Stanford · United States 248 works · 214,804 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/stanford-university/) · [🎓**University of Cambridge** Cambridge · United Kingdom 119 works · 110,950 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-cambridge/) · [🎓**Charles University** Prague · Czechia 99 works · 18,879 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/charles-university/) · [🎓**Bar-Ilan University** Ramat Gan · Israel 102 works · 17,587 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/bar-ilan-university/) · [🎓**The Ohio State University** Columbus · United States 46 works · 16,163 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/the-ohio-state-university/) · [🎓**Uppsala University** Uppsala · Sweden 46 works · 11,454 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/uppsala-university/) · [🎓**University of Turku** Turku · Finland 11 works · 4,024 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-turku/) · [🎓**Weizmann Institute of Science** Rehovot · Israel 7 works · 2,300 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/weizmann-institute-of-science/) · [🎓**Open University of Israel** Raanana · Israel 13 works · 2,012 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/open-university-of-israel/)

Also on the byline: [Information Technology University](https://ror.org/00ngv8j44).

Topics[Universal Dependencies](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/universal-dependencies/) · [Treebanks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/treebanks/) · [Multilingual & cross-lingual NLP](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/multilingual-nlp/)

## Cite

Cite as Joakim Nivre, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Filip Ginter, Yoav Goldberg, Jan Hajič, Christopher D. Manning, Ryan McDonald, Slav Petrov, Sampo Pyysalo, Natalia Silveira, Reut Tsarfaty and Daniel Zeman. 2016. Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16).

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8](https://doi.org/10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8)

```bibtex
@inproceedings{nivre2016universal,
  title = {{Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection}},
  author = {Joakim Nivre, Marie-Catherine {de Marneffe}, Filip Ginter, Yoav Goldberg, Jan Hajič, Christopher D. Manning, Ryan McDonald, Slav Petrov, Sampo Pyysalo, Natalia Silveira, Reut Tsarfaty and Daniel Zeman},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16)},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/2hnj7od8afy8}
}
```

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## References

30 references, 12 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Bosco, C., Montemagni, S., and Simi, M. (2013). Converting Italian treebanks: Towards an Italian Stanford dependency treebank. In LAW & Interoperability with Discourse. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bosco%2C+C%2E%2C+Montemagni%2C+S%2E%2C+and+Simi%2C+M%2E+%282013%29%2E+Converting+Italian+treebanks%3A+Towards+an+Italian+Stanford+dependency+treebank%2E+In+LAW+%26+Interoperability+with+Discourse%2E)
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4. Buchholz, S. and Marsi, E. (2006). CoNLL-X shared task on multilingual dependency parsing. In CoNLL, pages 149–164. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/buchholz-2006-conll-x-shared-task-multilingual/)
5. Chang, P.-C., Tseng, H., Jurafsky, D., and Manning, C. D. (2009). Discriminative reordering with Chinese grammatical relations features. In SSST, pages 51–59. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Chang%2C+P%2E%2DC%2E%2C+Tseng%2C+H%2E%2C+Jurafsky%2C+D%2E%2C+and+Manning%2C+C%2E+D%2E+%282009%29%2E+Discriminative+reordering+with+Chinese+grammatical+relations+features%2E+In+SSST%2C+pages+51%E2%80%9359%2E)
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7. de Marneffe, M.-C. and Manning, C. D. (2008). The Stanford typed dependencies representation. In Workshop on Cross-framework and Cross-domain Parser Evaluation. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marneffe-2008-stanford-typed-dependencies-representation/)
8. de Marneffe, M.-C., MacCartney, B., and Manning, C. D. (2006). Generating typed dependency parses from phrase structure parses. In LREC. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marneffe-2006-generating-typed-dependency-parses-phrase/)
9. de Marneffe, M.-C., Dozat, T., Silveira, N., Haverinen, K., Ginter, F., Nivre, J., and Manning, C. D. (2014). Universal Stanford dependencies: A cross-linguistic typology. In LREC, pages 4585–4592. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marneffe-2014-universal-stanford-dependencies-cross-linguistic/)
10. Dixon, R. M. (2009). Basic Linguistic Theory. Volume 1: Methodology. Oxford University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Dixon%2C+R%2E+M%2E+%282009%29%2E+Basic+Linguistic+Theory%2E+Volume+1%3A+Methodology%2E+Oxford+University+Press%2E)
11. Haverinen, K., Nyblom, J., Viljanen, T., Laippala, V., Kohonen, S., Missilä, A., Ojala, S., Salakoski, T., and Ginter, F. (2013). Building the essential resources for Finnish: the Turku dependency treebank. Language Resources and Evaluation. In press. Available online. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Haverinen%2C+K%2E%2C+Nyblom%2C+J%2E%2C+Viljanen%2C+T%2E%2C+Laippala%2C+V%2E%2C+Kohonen%2C+S%2E%2C+Missila%CC%88%2C+A%2E%2C+Ojala%2C+S%2E%2C+Salakoski%2C+T%2E%2C+and+Ginter%2C+F%2E+%282013%29%2E+Building+the+essential+resources+for+Finnish%3A+the+Turku+dependency+tr)
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14. Luotolahti, J., Kanerva, J., Pyysalo, S., and Ginter, F. (2015). SETS: scalable and efficient tree search in dependency graphs. In NAACL Demo, pages 51–55. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Luotolahti%2C+J%2E%2C+Kanerva%2C+J%2E%2C+Pyysalo%2C+S%2E%2C+and+Ginter%2C+F%2E+%282015%29%2E+SETS%3A+scalable+and+efficient+tree+search+in+dependency+graphs%2E+In+NAACL+Demo%2C+pages+51%E2%80%9355%2E)
15. McDonald, R. and Nivre, J. (2007). Characterizing the errors of data-driven dependency parsing models. In Proceedings of EMNLP-CoNLL, pages 122–131. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/mcdonald-2007-characterizing-errors-data-driven-dependency/)
16. McDonald, R., Nivre, J., Quirmbach-Brundage, Y., Goldberg, Y., Das, D., Ganchev, K., Hall, K., Petrov, S., Zhang, H., Täckström, O., Bedini, C., Bertomeu Castelló, N., and Lee, J. (2013). Universal dependency annotation for multilingual parsing. In ACL. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/mcdonald-2013-universal-dependency-annotation-multilingual-parsing/)
17. Nivre, J. and Megyesi, B. (2007). Bootstrapping a Swedish treeebank using cross-corpus harmonization and annotation projection. In TLT, pages 97–102. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nivre%2C+J%2E+and+Megyesi%2C+B%2E+%282007%29%2E+Bootstrapping+a+Swedish+treeebank+using+cross%2Dcorpus+harmonization+and+annotation+projection%2E+In+TLT%2C+pages+97%E2%80%93102%2E)
18. Osborne, T. and Maxwell, D. (2015). A historical overview of the status of function words in dependency grammar. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015), pages 241–250. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Osborne%2C+T%2E+and+Maxwell%2C+D%2E+%282015%29%2E+A+historical+overview+of+the+status+of+function+words+in+dependency+grammar%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Third+International+Conference+on+Dependency+Linguistics+%28Depling)
19. Petrov, S., Das, D., and McDonald, R. (2012). A universal part-of-speech tagset. In LREC. [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/petrov-2012-universal-part-speech-tagset/)
20. Pyysalo, S. and Ginter, F. (2014). Collaborative development of annotation guidelines with application to Universal Dependencies. In SLTC. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Pyysalo%2C+S%2E+and+Ginter%2C+F%2E+%282014%29%2E+Collaborative+development+of+annotation+guidelines+with+application+to+Universal+Dependencies%2E+In+SLTC%2E)
21. Rosa, R., Mašek, J., Mareček, D., Popel, M., Zeman, D., and Žabokrtský, Z. (2014). HamleDT 2.0: Thirty dependency treebanks stanfordized. In LREC, pages 2334– 2341. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Rosa%2C+R%2E%2C+Mas%CC%8Cek%2C+J%2E%2C+Marec%CC%8Cek%2C+D%2E%2C+Popel%2C+M%2E%2C+Zeman%2C+D%2E%2C+and+Z%CC%8Cabokrtsky%CC%81%2C+Z%2E+%282014%29%2E+HamleDT+2%2E0%3A+Thirty+dependency+treebanks+stanfordized%2E+In+LREC%2C+pages+2334%E2%80%93+2341%2E)
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29. Zeman, D., Mareček, D., Popel, M., Ramasamy, L., Štěpánek, J., Žabokrtský, Z., and Hajič, J. (2012). HamleDT: To parse or not to parse? In LREC, pages 2735– 2741. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Zeman%2C+D%2E%2C+Marec%CC%8Cek%2C+D%2E%2C+Popel%2C+M%2E%2C+Ramasamy%2C+L%2E%2C+S%CC%8Cte%CC%8Cpa%CC%81nek%2C+J%2E%2C+Z%CC%8Cabokrtsky%CC%81%2C+Z%2E%2C+and+Hajic%CC%8C%2C+J%2E+%282012%29%2E+HamleDT%3A+To+parse+or+not+to+parse%3F+In+LREC%2C+pages+2735%E2%80%93+2741%2E)
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