This is part of archived UD v1 documentation. See http://universaldependencies.org/ for the current version.
home en/dep issue tracker

case: case marking

The case relation is used for any preposition in English. Prepositions are treated as dependents of the noun they attach to or introduce in an “extended nominal projection”. Thus, contrary to SD, UD abandons treating a preposition as a mediator between a modified word and its object. The case relation aims at providing a uniform analysis of prepositions and case in morphologically rich languages. In English, subordinating conjunctions introducing clauses are often in the form of prepositions. However, they are given a different dependency: The relation mark is used for markers in an “extended clausal projection”.

The case relation is also used for the possessive clitic ‘s in English, which we separate from what it modifies, because it acts as a phrasal clitic, as shown in the last example.


Treebank Statistics (UD_English)

This relation is universal.

20662 nodes (8%) are attached to their parents as case.

19807 instances of case (96%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 2.03591133481754.

The following 54 pairs of parts of speech are connected with case: NOUN-ADP (13218; 64% instances), PROPN-ADP (3754; 18% instances), PRON-ADP (1317; 6% instances), PROPN-PART (525; 3% instances), NUM-ADP (419; 2% instances), NOUN-PART (254; 1% instances), ADJ-ADP (235; 1% instances), NOUN-VERB (171; 1% instances), ADV-ADP (113; 1% instances), DET-ADP (99; 0% instances), NUM-SYM (83; 0% instances), ADV-ADV (81; 0% instances), SYM-ADP (75; 0% instances), PRON-SCONJ (62; 0% instances), X-ADP (44; 0% instances), PROPN-VERB (28; 0% instances), NOUN-SYM (26; 0% instances), NOUN-ADV (23; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (21; 0% instances), PRON-PART (16; 0% instances), PROPN-ADJ (15; 0% instances), NOUN-SCONJ (11; 0% instances), ADV-SCONJ (7; 0% instances), ADJ-SCONJ (6; 0% instances), PRON-VERB (5; 0% instances), NOUN-NOUN (4; 0% instances), NOUN-X (4; 0% instances), NUM-ADV (4; 0% instances), NUM-PUNCT (4; 0% instances), NUM-ADJ (3; 0% instances), PROPN-ADV (3; 0% instances), PROPN-SYM (3; 0% instances), SYM-SYM (3; 0% instances), ADP-ADP (2; 0% instances), INTJ-ADP (2; 0% instances), NOUN-PUNCT (2; 0% instances), NUM-NUM (2; 0% instances), PROPN-SCONJ (2; 0% instances), ADJ-PART (1; 0% instances), ADJ-SYM (1; 0% instances), CONJ-ADP (1; 0% instances), DET-SCONJ (1; 0% instances), DET-VERB (1; 0% instances), NOUN-CONJ (1; 0% instances), NOUN-DET (1; 0% instances), NOUN-PRON (1; 0% instances), NOUN-PROPN (1; 0% instances), NUM-NOUN (1; 0% instances), NUM-PART (1; 0% instances), PRON-ADJ (1; 0% instances), PROPN-INTJ (1; 0% instances), PROPN-PROPN (1; 0% instances), VERB-ADP (1; 0% instances), X-X (1; 0% instances).


Treebank Statistics (UD_English-ESL)

This relation is universal.

8356 nodes (9%) are attached to their parents as case.

8168 instances of case (98%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.81534226902824.

The following 37 pairs of parts of speech are connected with case: NOUN-ADP (6011; 72% instances), PRON-ADP (889; 11% instances), PROPN-ADP (687; 8% instances), NUM-ADP (158; 2% instances), DET-ADP (157; 2% instances), NOUN-PART (121; 1% instances), ADJ-ADP (60; 1% instances), NOUN-VERB (48; 1% instances), ADV-ADP (46; 1% instances), PROPN-PART (39; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (27; 0% instances), VERB-ADP (23; 0% instances), NOUN-ADV (16; 0% instances), ADV-ADV (12; 0% instances), PROPN-PROPN (8; 0% instances), SYM-ADP (7; 0% instances), NOUN-DET (6; 0% instances), PRON-PART (6; 0% instances), NOUN-SCONJ (4; 0% instances), NUM-ADV (4; 0% instances), PRON-ADV (4; 0% instances), PROPN-ADV (4; 0% instances), PRON-VERB (3; 0% instances), ADJ-SCONJ (2; 0% instances), INTJ-ADP (2; 0% instances), ADJ-PART (1; 0% instances), ADJ-VERB (1; 0% instances), ADP-ADP (1; 0% instances), ADP-ADV (1; 0% instances), AUX-ADP (1; 0% instances), DET-PART (1; 0% instances), NOUN-NOUN (1; 0% instances), NUM-SYM (1; 0% instances), PRON-ADJ (1; 0% instances), PRON-SCONJ (1; 0% instances), VERB-VERB (1; 0% instances), X-ADP (1; 0% instances).


Treebank Statistics (UD_English-LinES)

This relation is universal.

8276 nodes (10%) are attached to their parents as case.

7905 instances of case (96%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.98477525374577.

The following 26 pairs of parts of speech are connected with case: NOUN-ADP (5976; 72% instances), PRON-ADP (733; 9% instances), PROPN-ADP (570; 7% instances), VERB-ADP (340; 4% instances), PROPN-PART (185; 2% instances), ADJ-ADP (135; 2% instances), NOUN-PART (134; 2% instances), NUM-ADP (91; 1% instances), ADV-ADP (47; 1% instances), NOUN-ADV (15; 0% instances), ADP-ADP (12; 0% instances), AUX-ADP (10; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (6; 0% instances), PRON-PART (4; 0% instances), PROPN-ADJ (3; 0% instances), SYM-ADP (3; 0% instances), PRON-ADV (2; 0% instances), X-ADP (2; 0% instances), ADJ-ADV (1; 0% instances), NOUN-SCONJ (1; 0% instances), NOUN-VERB (1; 0% instances), NUM-ADJ (1; 0% instances), PART-ADP (1; 0% instances), PRON-SCONJ (1; 0% instances), PROPN-ADV (1; 0% instances), VERB-ADV (1; 0% instances).


case in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]
BESbswyBESbswyBESbswyBESbswy