--- title: "The Hebrew Universal Dependency Treebank — Sade 2018" description: "The Hebrew Treebank (HTB) grew from 500 newspaper sentences (2001) to 6221 sentences, through a chain of automatic and semi-automatic conversions: phrase…" authors: ["Shoval Sade", "Amit Seker", "Reut Tsarfaty"] year: 2018 venue: "Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018)" source: "https://aclanthology.org/W18-6016/" doi: "10.18653/v1/w18-6016" licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ud-2018-sade-hebrew-universal-dependency-treebank-past/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ud-2018-sade-hebrew-universal-dependency-treebank-past/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2018](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2018/page/3/) / The Hebrew Universal Dependency Treebank: Past, Present and Future # The Hebrew Universal Dependency Treebank: Past, Present and Future **Authors:** Shoval Sade; [Amit Seker](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/amit-seker/); [Reut Tsarfaty](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/reut-tsarfaty/) · **Year:** 2018 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018), pp. 133–143 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W18-6016](https://aclanthology.org/W18-6016/) · library `ud-2018-sade-hebrew-universal-dependency-treebank-past` · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (ACL Anthology) [**11** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2912509754) OpenAlex · 2026-10-14 · [**20** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ud-2018-sade-hebrew-universal-dependency-treebank-past/cited-by/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read · [Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018)](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W18-60/) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W18-6016/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W18-6016.pdf) - [DOI 10.18653/v1/w18-6016](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-6016) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2912509754) **Authors (3)** 1. Shoval Sade [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2245874395) 2. [Amit Seker](https://openalex.org/A5049561362) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2177708) · h 7 · 181 citations · 13 works 3. [Reut Tsarfaty](https://openalex.org/A5063283689) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6406-6568) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2799181) · h 24 · 2832 citations · 217 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The Hebrew Treebank (HTB) grew from 500 newspaper sentences (2001) to 6221 sentences, through a chain of automatic and semi-automatic conversions: phrase structure, then Goldberg's functional-head dependencies, then Unified-Stanford, then UD v1 and UD v2. The authors checked the UD v2 version label by label on the dev set and corrected three kinds of problem: argument types, morphology mixed up with syntax, and language-specific subtypes that duplicate a universal label. The result, UDv2New, changes modal auxiliaries to `aux` (the following verb becomes `xcomp`), predicative adjectives to `xcomp`, prepositional indirect objects to `obl`, `acl:inf` to `acl`, `conj:discourse` to `parataxis`, and tokenization of inserted particles. Parsing the dev set with yap under gold morphology raised MLAS from 72.76 to 75.58 and BLEX from 47.76 to 50.16. With automatic morphology the new scheme gave no gain, and it helped only when the correct analysis was injected into the lattice. The authors read this as a lexical-coverage problem, not a scheme problem. ## Ideas - I1. Turn the revised rules into checks: "an `obl` follows a preposition", "no `iobj` with an `ADP` child", "no `acl:inf`", "an `xcomp` under a modal verb has an `aux` head". Each is a pattern rule with an error or warning level, as in the paper's grewv-style list. Run them on `tools/hbo` output. - I2. The paper says the dative (experiencer, ethical, regular) is not separated by UD. Keep the discourse dative as a feature of the argument rather than as a core argument, and test the rule on a small list of Hebrew sentences from `macula compare` output. - I3. A/B measure: parse one dev set with `tools/hbo` under both schemes, with gold and with automatic morphology, two identical runs each. The paper's pattern (gain only with gold or infused lattices) is the expected outcome; if it does not hold, that is a finding. - I4. Modal verbs as a closed list: the paper's `Verb-Type=Mod` marking depends on a lexical class. A short table in the Hebrew verb notes, checked against the lexicon. ## For Mova I1 belongs in [languages/he/11-ud-analysis.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/he/11-ud-analysis/), with the output check in `tools/hbo`. I2 belongs in [languages/he/04-nouns-adjectives-pronouns.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/he/04-nouns-adjectives-pronouns/) and [languages/he/06-prepositions-particles.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/he/06-prepositions-particles/). I3 is a test for `tools/hbo`, with its result recorded in [languages/he/12-mova.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/he/12-mova/). I4 belongs in [languages/he/05-verbs.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/he/05-verbs/). Topics: [Treebanks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/treebanks/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.18653/v1/w18-6016](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-6016) ```bibtex @inproceedings{sade2018hebrew, title = {{The Hebrew Universal Dependency Treebank: Past, Present and Future}}, author = {Sade, Shoval and Seker, Amit and Tsarfaty, Reut}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018)}, year = {2018}, doi = {10.18653/v1/w18-6016}, url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-6016} } ``` - [← previous The head the construct: Construct state nominals as a novel window to syntactic movement difficulties in hearing impairment](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lingbulk-2018-friedmann-head-construct-construct-state-nominals/) - [next → The IIT Bombay English-Hindi Parallel Corpus](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kunchukuttan-2018-iit-bombay-english-hindi-parallel/) - [↑ back to papers of 2018](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2018/page/3/) ## References 2 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Meni Adler. 2007. Hebrew Morphological Disambiguation: An Unsupervised Stochastic Word-based Approach. Ph.D. thesis, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Meni+Adler%2E+2007%2E+Hebrew+Morphological+Disambiguation%3A+An+Unsupervised+Stochastic+Word%2Dbased+Approach%2E+Ph%2ED%2E+thesis%2C+Ben%2DGurion+University+of+the+Negev%2C+Beer%2DSheva%2C+Israel%2E) 2. Meni Adler, Yael Dahan Netzer, Yoav Goldberg, David Gabay, and Michael Elhadad. 2008. Tagging a hebrew corpus: the case of participles. In LREC. Citeseer. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Meni+Adler%2C+Yael+Dahan+Netzer%2C+Yoav+Goldberg%2C+David+Gabay%2C+and+Michael+Elhadad%2E+2008%2E+Tagging+a+hebrew+corpus%3A+the+case+of+participles%2E+In+LREC%2E+Citeseer%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lingbulk-2008-adler-tagging-hebrew-corpus-case-participles/)