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# Does Universal Dependencies need a parsing representation? An investigation of English

**Authors:** [Natalia Silveira](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/natalia-silveira/), [Christopher Manning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/christopher-manning/) · **Year:** 2015 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W15-2134](https://aclanthology.org/W15-2134/) (ACL Anthology W15-2134) **License of the paper:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) (ACL Anthology, before 2016) — [creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

[**14** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2251066482) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[**10** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/silveira-2015-does-universal-dependencies-need-parsing/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015)](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W15-21/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W15-2134/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W15-2134.pdf)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2251066482)

**Authors (2)**

1. [Natalia Silveira](https://openalex.org/A5113023938) h 7 · 1857 citations · 12 works
2. [Christopher Manning](https://openalex.org/A5046006076) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6155-649X) · h 139 · 180101 citations · 770 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## Summary

UD makes content words the heads and attaches function words (auxiliaries, copulas, subordinators, adpositions) to them. The authors ask whether English parsing would benefit from an intermediate representation where function words are heads, with a conversion back to UD afterwards. They define reversible tree transformations for four constructions (prepositional phrases, verb groups, copular clauses and marked subordinate clauses) that are lossless on gold data, and train MaltParser on each transformed version of the UD English Web Treebank. Some variants are indeed easier to parse when scored in their own representation. After converting parser output back to UD, however, accuracy always drops: one error in a function-head tree can become two in UD, and moving dependents propagates wrong attachments. The paper is a useful negative result: parsing into a "friendlier" representation and converting does not improve English UD parsing.

## How Mova uses it

- [Function words are leaves of the tree](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/seeds/errors/function-words-leaves/): rule `en.errors.aux-cop-leaf` in the grammar expert system (`en/src/expert.rs`) — function words (`aux`, `cop`, `case`, `mark`, …) should be leaves with almost no dependents. The paper is cited as the rationale for keeping content heads even though function heads are easier for a parser.
- Indirectly, it supports the choice to train the English parser (`en/src/parse.rs`) directly on UD trees rather than on a converted intermediate scheme.

## Effectiveness in Mova

Not measured separately. Background reading behind one annotation-checking rule and a design choice (parse UD directly); no experiment with function-head intermediate representations was run.

---

👨‍🔬💥

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

## Cite

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

```
@inproceedings{silveira2015does,
  title = {{Does Universal Dependencies need a parsing representation? An investigation of English}},
  author = {Silveira, Natalia and Manning, Christopher},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015)},
  year = {2015},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/W15-2134/}
}
```

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## References

16 references, 5 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Miguel Ballesteros and Joakim Nivre. 2012. Malt-Optimizer: An Optimization Tool for MaltParser. In Proceedings of the Demonstrations at the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, EACL ’12, pages 58–62, Stroudsburg, PA, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Miguel+Ballesteros+and+Joakim+Nivre%2E+2012%2E+Malt%2DOptimizer%3A+An+Optimization+Tool+for+MaltParser%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Demonstrations+at+the+13th+Conference+of+the+European+Chapter+of+the+Association+f)
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3. Daniel M. Bikel. 2004. Intricacies of collins’ parsing model. Comput. Linguist., 30(4):479–511, December. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1162/0891201042544929)
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5. Richard Johansson and Pierre Nugues. 2007. Extended constituent-to-dependency conversion for English. In Joakim Nivre, Heiki-Jaan Kalep, Kadri Muischnek, and Mare Koit, editors, NODALIDA 2007 Proceedings, pages 105–112, Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Richard+Johansson+and+Pierre+Nugues%2E+2007%2E+Extended+constituent%2Dto%2Ddependency+conversion+for+English%2E+In+Joakim+Nivre%2C+Heiki%2DJaan+Kalep%2C+Kadri+Muischnek%2C+and+Mare+Koit%2C+editors%2C+NODALIDA+2007+Proceedi) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/map-2007-johansson-extended-constituent-dependency-conversion-english/)
6. Dan Klein and Christopher D. Manning. 2003. Accurate Unlexicalized Parsing. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics - Volume 1, ACL ’03, pages 423– 430, Stroudsburg, PA, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Dan+Klein+and+Christopher+D%2E+Manning%2E+2003%2E+Accurate+Unlexicalized+Parsing%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+41st+Annual+Meeting+on+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics+%2D+Volume+1%2C+ACL+%E2%80%9903%2C+pages+423%E2%80%93+430%2C+) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2003-klein-accurate-unlexicalized-parsing/)
7. Marie-Catherine Marneffe and Christopher D. Manning. 2008. The Stanford Typed Dependencies Representation. Coling 2008: Proceedings of the workshop on Cross-Framework and Cross-Domain Parser Evaluation, pages 1–8. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marie%2DCatherine+Marneffe+and+Christopher+D%2E+Manning%2E+2008%2E+The+Stanford+Typed+Dependencies+Representation%2E+Coling+2008%3A+Proceedings+of+the+workshop+on+Cross%2DFramework+and+Cross%2DDomain+Parser+Evaluatio) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/marneffe-2008-stanford-typed-dependencies-representation/)
8. Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Timothy Dozat, Natalia Silveira, Katri Haverinen, Filip Ginter, Joakim Nivre, and Christopher D. Manning. 2014. Universal Stanford dependencies: A cross-linguistic typology. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-2014). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marie%2DCatherine+de+Marneffe%2C+Timothy+Dozat%2C+Natalia+Silveira%2C+Katri+Haverinen%2C+Filip+Ginter%2C+Joakim+Nivre%2C+and+Christopher+D%2E+Manning%2E+2014%2E+Universal+Stanford+dependencies%3A+A+cross%2Dlinguistic+typolog) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/ud-2014-marneffe-universal-stanford-dependencies-cross-linguistic/)
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11. Jens Nilsson, Joakim Nivre, and Johan Hall. 2007. Generalizing Tree Transformations for Inductive Dependency Parsing. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics, pages 968–975. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jens+Nilsson%2C+Joakim+Nivre%2C+and+Johan+Hall%2E+2007%2E+Generalizing+Tree+Transformations+for+Inductive+Dependency+Parsing%2E+Proceedings+of+the+45th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+of+Computational+Linguis)
12. Joakim Nivre, Johan Hall, Jens Nilsson, Atanas Chanev, Glsen Eryigit, Sandra Kbler, Svetoslav Marinov, and Erwin Marsi. 2007. MaltParser: A language-independent system for data-driven dependency parsing. Natural Language Engineering, 13(02):95–135. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1017/s1351324906004505)
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14. Slav Petrov, Leon Barrett, Romain Thibaux, and Dan Klein. 2006. Learning Accurate, Compact, and Interpretable Tree Annotation. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Linguistics and the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, ACL-44, pages 433–440, Stroudsburg, PA, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Slav+Petrov%2C+Leon+Barrett%2C+Romain+Thibaux%2C+and+Dan+Klein%2E+2006%2E+Learning+Accurate%2C+Compact%2C+and+Interpretable+Tree+Annotation%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+21st+International+Conference+on+Computational+Ling) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2006-petrov-learning-accurate-compact-interpretable-tree/)
15. Roy Schwartz, Omri Abend, and Ari Rappoport. 2012. Learnability-based syntactic annotation design. In COLING, volume 24, pages 2405–2422. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Roy+Schwartz%2C+Omri+Abend%2C+and+Ari+Rappoport%2E+2012%2E+Learnability%2Dbased+syntactic+annotation+design%2E+In+COLING%2C+volume+24%2C+pages+2405%E2%80%932422%2E)
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