--- title: "Improving Surface-syntactic Universal — Gerdes 2019" description: "This paper refines SUD (Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies), an annotation scheme that closely parallels UD and can be automatically converted to it." authors: ["Kim Gerdes", "Bruno Guillaume", "Sylvain Kahane", "Guy Perrier"] year: 2019 venue: "Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2019)" source: "https://aclanthology.org/W19-7814/" doi: "10.18653/v1/w19-7814" 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/papers/gerdes-2019-improving-surface-syntactic-universal-dependencies/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/papers/gerdes-2019-improving-surface-syntactic-universal-dependencies/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/) / [2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/2019/page/2/) / Improving Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies (SUD): MWEs and deep syntactic features # Improving Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies (SUD): MWEs and deep syntactic features **Authors:** [Kim Gerdes](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/authors/kim-gerdes/), [Bruno Guillaume](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/authors/bruno-guillaume/), [Sylvain Kahane](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/authors/sylvain-kahane/), [Guy Perrier](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/authors/guy-perrier/) · **Year:** 2019 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2019) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W19-7814/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W19-7814.pdf) · [DOI 10.18653/v1/w19-7814](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w19-7814) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2996275617) **Citations:** 22 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) · [8](#cited-by) in our library, of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read ## Summary This paper refines SUD (Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies), an annotation scheme that closely parallels UD and can be automatically converted to it. Unlike UD, which links content words and treats function words as markers, SUD selects heads by distributional criteria, so functional words often become heads. It also defines relation labels by which elements can substitute for each other in a position, not by the dependent's POS. The authors present an updated, hierarchical relation inventory organized around a few broad functions. They separate surface-syntactic relations from an orthogonal layer of deep-syntactic features, marked with "@" on labels, which captures diathesis, control, expletives, and light verbs. For multiword expressions, they propose a feature giving the POS of the whole expression, so that MWEs can receive a regular internal analysis. They also describe how conversion between UD and SUD works in both directions, which is reversible in most cases. This work matters because SUD gives communities that object to some UD design choices a linguistically motivated alternative that remains compatible with the UD ecosystem. ## Key points - Seventeen UD relations, including nsubj, obj, xcomp, ccomp, amod, advcl, aux, cop, case and mark, are collapsed into three core SUD relations: subj, comp and mod. These have subtypes such as comp:obj, comp:obl, comp:pred, comp:aux and comp:cleft, with udep and unk serving as underspecified fallbacks. - The deep-syntactic features are @x (a dependent whose subject is not realized locally, replacing UD's xcomp logic), @pass, @caus, @agent, @expl, @lvc and @fixed. - A new feature, ExtPOS (with a companion Type feature), records the external POS of idioms, titles and "grafts." The authors suggest UD adopt it as well, partly to simplify treebank validation. - To keep conversion reversible, two new UD subtypes are introduced: nummod:det and parataxis:discourse. - Conversion in both directions is implemented as GREW grammars. Resources are collected at surfacesyntacticud.github.io. SUD is already used for a Naija treebank, and French and Chinese treebanks are in progress. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [Universal Dependencies](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/topics/universal-dependencies/) ## Cited by Cited by 8 papers of our library cite it (of the 140673 whose bibliographies we read); 1 of them have a page here, 7 not yet. - [Contribution of Linguistic Typology to Universal Dependency Parsing: An Empirical Investigation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/basirat-2024-contribution-linguistic-typology-universal-dependency/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{gerdes2019improving, title = {{Improving Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies (SUD): MWEs and deep syntactic features}}, author = {Gerdes, Kim and Guillaume, Bruno and Kahane, Sylvain and Perrier, Guy}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2019)}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.18653/v1/w19-7814}, url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w19-7814} } ``` - [← previous Improving Generalization in Coreference Resolution via Adversarial Training](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/subramanian-2019-improving-generalization-coreference-resolution-adversarial/) - [next → Incorporating Context and External Knowledge for Pronoun Coreference Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/zhang-2019-incorporating-context-external-knowledge-pronoun/) - [↑ back to papers of 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/papers/2019/page/2/) ## References 3 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Guillaume Bonfante, Bruno Guillaume, and Guy Perrier. 2018. Application of Graph Rewriting to Natural Language Processing, volume 1 of Logic, Linguistics and Computer Science Set. ISTE Wiley. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Guillaume+Bonfante%2C+Bruno+Guillaume%2C+and+Guy+Perrier%2E+2018%2E+Application+of+Graph+Rewriting+to+Natural+Language+Processing%2C+volume+1+of+Logic%2C+Linguistics+and+Computer+Science+Set%2E+ISTE+Wiley%2E) 2. Bernard Caron, Marine Courtin, Kim Gerdes, and Sylvain Kahane. 2019. A surface-syntactic ud treebank for naija. In Proceedings of Universal Dependencies Workshop, Paris. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bernard+Caron%2C+Marine+Courtin%2C+Kim+Gerdes%2C+and+Sylvain+Kahane%2E+2019%2E+A+surface%2Dsyntactic+ud+treebank+for+naija%2E+In+Proceedings+of+Universal+Dependencies+Workshop%2C+Paris%2E) 3. Marine Courtin, Bernard Caron, Kim Gerdes, and Sylvain Kahane. 2018. Establishing a language by annotating a corpus: The case ofnaija, a post-creole spoken in nigeria. In Proceedings of the workshop on Annotation in Digital Humanities (An-nDH), pages 7–11, Sofia. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marine+Courtin%2C+Bernard+Caron%2C+Kim+Gerdes%2C+and+Sylvain+Kahane%2E+2018%2E+Establishing+a+language+by+annotating+a+corpus%3A+The+case+ofnaija%2C+a+post%2Dcreole+spoken+in+nigeria%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+workshop+o)