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# Udapi: Universal API for Universal Dependencies

**Authors:** [Martin Popel](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/martin-popel/), [Zdeněk Žabokrtský](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/zdenek-zabokrtsku/), Martin Vojtek · **Year:** 2017 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W17-0412](https://aclanthology.org/W17-0412/) (ACL Anthology W17-0412) **License of the paper:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (ACL Anthology) — [creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

[**36** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/popel-2017-udapi-universal-api-universal-dependencies/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017)](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W17-04/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W17-0412/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W17-0412.pdf)

**Authors (3)**

1. Martin Popel
2. Zdeněk Žabokrtský
3. Martin Vojtek

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## Summary

As UD and the CoNLL-U format spread, ad hoc scripts for processing treebanks became a common source of subtle bugs, such as forgetting to renumber nodes after a deletion. Udapi is an open-source framework with an object-oriented API for UD data, implemented in Python (the main version), Perl and Java. Processing is organised as a scenario of sequential blocks over a document–bundle–tree–node hierarchy, usable from code or from the `udapy` command line. It supports visualisation (terminal, HTML, LaTeX), format conversion, querying with arbitrary Python conditions, editing, content validation that goes beyond the official online checks, parsing through UDPipe, and UAS/LAS evaluation. In the authors' benchmark all three implementations were many times faster and far less memory-hungry than the older Treex framework. Blocks from Udapi were used to convert several treebanks to UD v2.

## How Mova uses it

- `coref/src/score.rs` and `coref/src/corefud.rs` — the head of a mention span is computed as in Udapi's `corefud.MoveHead` block: the word whose own head lies outside the span; among several candidates, the highest in the tree, then non-punctuation, then the first. This head is the key for head-based mention matching in the coreference scorer.
- The rule is reimplemented in Rust rather than calling Udapi, so scoring stays self-contained and deterministic.

## Effectiveness in Mova

Not measured separately. The head definition is a small but load-bearing convention: it determines which mentions count as matching in every reported coreference score (for example CoNLL F1 60.31 on GUM test with gold trees, without singletons). Following the shared-task tooling keeps Mova's numbers comparable in method to the CRAC evaluations.

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👨‍🔬💥

Topics: [Universal Dependencies](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/universal-dependencies/) · [Treebanks](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/treebanks/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@inproceedings{popel2017udapi,
  title = {{Udapi: Universal API for Universal Dependencies}},
  author = {Popel, Martin and Žabokrtský, Zdeněk and Vojtek, Martin},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017)},
  year = {2017},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/W17-0412/}
}
```

- [← previous All Roads Lead to UD: Converting Stanford and Penn Parses to English Universal Dependencies with Multilayer Annotations](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/peng-2018-all-roads-lead-ud-converting/)
- [next → A Grammar of Late Modern English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/poutsma-1904-grammar-late-modern-english/)
- [↑ back to papers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/)

## References

8 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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