Dependencies
Note: nmod, neg, and punct appear in two places.
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acl: clausal modifier of noun
acl is used for dependent finite and non-finite clauses that modify a nominal (either a noun or a pronoun). The head of the acl relation is the noun/pronoun that is modified, and the dependent is the head of the clause that modifies the noun/pronoun: it can be the verb itself or an adjective part of a verbal predicate.
acl is used in the following cases:
- participial modifiers of nouns
- finite and non finite clausal complements of nouns like fatto (fact), volta (time), bisogno (need), modo (way).
- infinitival modifiers of nouns or pronouns
- cases of secondary predication for non-core argument of a clausal predicate. For more on that and secondary predication of core arguments see the xcomp relation.
- relative clauses. See acl:relcl.
In Italian relative clauses get assigned a specific relation acl:relcl, a specification of acl. Also note that the acl relation contrasts with the advcl relation, which is used for adverbial clauses that modify a predicate.
acl:relcl: relative clauses
A relative clause is an instance of acl, characterized by finiteness and usually omission of the modified noun in the embedded clause. The noun can be omitted or, more frequently, substituted by a relative pronoun (il quale, cui), relative conjunction (che), or an adverb (dove).
acl:relcl is also used for case of partitive relative clauses, i.e. propositional phrases introduced by tra cui, fra cui where the verb of the subordinate clause can be elided.
advcl: adverbial clause modifier
An adverbial clause modifier is a clause which modifies a verb or other predicate (adjective, etc.), as a modifier, not as a core complement. This includes things such as a temporal clause, consequence, conditional clause, purpose clause, etc. The dependent must be clausal (otherwise it is an advmod) and the dependent is the main predicate of the clause (a verbal predicate or a noun if the verb is omitted).
advcl covers the following typology of cases:
- participial modifiers
- finite clausal modifiers
- infinitival modifiers
- gerundival modifiers
advmod: adverbial modifier
An adverbial modifier of a word is a (non-clausal) adverb or adverbial phrase that serves to modify the meaning of the word. In Italian adverbial modifiers cover all adverbs functioning as modifiers as well as pronominal adverbs.
advmod is used in the following cases:
- adverbial modifiers involving different types of parts of speech
- pronominal adverbs modifying verbs
- non-prepositional multiword expressions (like pian piano, vale a dire, d’ora in avanti, oltre che).
NB For prepositional multiword expressions the correct relations are case or mark.
amod: adjectival modifier
An adjectival modifier is any adjective that serves to modify the meaning of a nominal head. In Italian, adjectival modifiers can occur both in pre- and post-nominal position. Note that in Italian the class of adjectives also includes ordinal numerals which thus can be adjectival modifiers (always depending on the context). Adjectives can be found as modifiers of nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs and other adjectives.
There are no instances of adjectives as sentence root in Italian, unless they are part of a verbal predicate with the verb essere as copula.
appos: appositional modifier
An appositional modifier of a noun is a nominal immediately following the first noun that serves to define or modify that noun. It includes parenthesized examples, as well as defining abbreviations.
In case of more than one appositive nominal, all nouns should be marked as modifying the first noun, rather than being chained:
aux: auxiliary
An auxiliary of a clause is a non-main verb of the clause. In Italian the two main auxiliary verbs are form of essere (to be), avere (to have); in periphrastic tenses with the progressive form is used the verb stare instead. Modals are also marked as auxiliary (fare to do, sapere to know, volere to want, potere to can or dovere must).
- auxiliary avere
- auxiliary essere
- auxiliary stare
- modal auxiliaries
Note that the auxiliary verb used to construct the passive voice is not labeled aux but auxpass.
auxpass: passive auxiliary
A passive auxiliary (essere/venire) of a clause is a non-main verb of the clause which conveys information about the passive voice.
Sometimes the verb essere to be can be substituted by other verbs that assume the same function, like andare (to go) and venire (to come).
Andare is used both to express a very strong need (see the first example below), or for passive progressive forms with an impersonal value.
Venire is used as auxpass to clearly express the passive information when the main verb is ambiguous: some verbs, like lavare to wash, with essere as auxiliary might seem a description of a property rather than passice forms, while with venire the passive construction is evident (la finestra è lavata vs * la finestra viene lavata [da qualcuno]). Note in fact that *venire is only used for simple tenses, because in past tenses the passive action is expressed by the participle (see the next section for how to annotate it).
Note that periphrastic tenses in passive constructions are marked as follows, by distinguishing between the passive auxiliary (i.e. that immediately preceding the verbal head) which is marked as auxpass and the tense auxiliaries (the preceding ones) which are marked as aux.
case: case marking
In Italian, the case relation is used for any preposition introducing a noun, pronoun, adjective or adverb. Prepositions are treated as dependents of the element they attach to (or introduce) in an “extended nominal projection”.
The case relation can also be used for multiword expression introducing a complement.
If the head of the relation is a verb in a subordinate clause, than the correct relation is mark. If the verb is used as a noun infinitive, than case is the correct relation.
cc: coordinating conjunction
A coordinating conjunction relation (cc) holds between the head conjunct of a coordinate structure (which is taken to be the first conjunct) and any of the coordinating conjunctions involved in the structure. This also includes the first element in paired conjunctions like “sia … sia” (both…and).
cc also marks the relation between a sentence initial coordinating conjunction and the sentence root.
Elements that can assume the role of cc are POS tagged as CONJ and SCONJ, but there are also some ADV elements that have the role of conjunctions because they are used in a multiword expressions (for more on that see mwe).
NB Note that punctuation is never treated as coordinating conjunction.
For more on coordination, see the conj relation.
ccomp: clausal complement
A clausal complement (ccomp) of a verb or a verbal predicate is a dependent clause which is a core argument. In a clausal complement the subject is not determined by obligatory control, either because the clause has its own overt subject or because the subject is arbitrary or determined anaphorically. Such clausal complements can have the following structures:
- finite clausal complement of verbal head
- finite clausal complement of adjectival head (as part of a verbal predicate)
- infinite clausal complement of verbal head
- infinite clausal complement of essere. In this case, the copula is treated as a head
NB Note that if the subject of the clausal complement is controlled (that is, it is the same as the higher subject, object or indirect object, with no other possible interpretation) the appropriate relation is xcomp.
compound: compound
compound in Italian is used for noun compounds and numbers (e.g. numbers expressed alphabetically). compound is not used to mark only traditional compounds, but also terms that frequently appear together, words juxtaposed or separated by graphical signs (like “-“).
conj: conjunct
A conjunct is the relation between two elements connected by a coordinating conjunction, such as e, o, etc. The head of the relation is the first conjunct and all the other conjuncts depend on it via the conj relation. Here are some examples of the use of the conj relation.
- coordination with conjunctions
- Asyndetic coordination with omitted conjunction. Commas or other punctuation symbols delimit the conjuncts.
- mixed coordination. Note that in the example ma (but) coordinates two clauses, not syntagms; head and dependent of the conj relation are the main verbs of the clauses.
The dependent of the relation automatically inherit the syntactic relations of the head, unless they have different dependencies explicitly expressed. Here, for instance, the subject of the two verbs is the same (so cominciare inherits it from lasciare), but the direct object is different (so not inherited).
cop: copula
A copula is the relation between the complement of a copular verb and the copular verb essere (in Italian this is the only verb that can be a copula). The copula be is not treated as the head of a clause, but rather as the dependent of a lexical predicate, as exemplified below, which can be an adjective, a noun or a pronoun.
In predicative wh-constructions, the fronted wh-word is the head, and the copula is another cop.
If the copula comes together another verbal auxiliaries (e.g. because of the tense), they are taken as dependents of the lexical predicate:
The verb essere is not always marked as copula, but can also be the main verb of the clause. This analysis is generally adopted when:
- the verb essere is used in presentational or existential constructions where it has an existential or locative meaning;
- the predicate is a prepositional phrase, in which case the nominal part of the prepositional phrase is the head of a nmod relation, with a few exception in case of idiomatic forms, such as in forma (in shape).
- the complement of the verb essere is a subordinate clause
csubj: clausal subject
A clausal subject is a clausal syntactic subject of a clause, i.e., the subject is itself a clause. The governor of this relation might not always be a verb: when the verb is a copular verb, the root of the clause is the complement of the copular verb. The dependent is the main lexical verb or other predicate of the subject clause.
Examples:
csubjpass: clausal passive subject
A clausal passive subject is a clausal syntactic subject of a passive clause (or more generally, any voice where the proto-agent argument does not become the subject of the clause).
dep: unspecified dependency
A dependency is labeled as dep when a system is unable to determine a more precise dependency relation between two words. This may be because of a weird grammatical construction, a limitation in software, a parser error, or because of an unresolved long distance dependency. This is also the case of “broken” sentences like the one below.
det: determiner
The determiner relation holds between a nominal head and its determiner.
The dependent of a determiner relation is always a word of POS DET. If a POS DET word appears before another determiner, than it is marked as det:predet. See below for the description of this relation.
det:poss: possessive determiner
Whenever there is a possessive determiner, det:poss should be used instead of det. All possessive determiners have the feature Possessive defined as Yes and the only instances of the det:poss relation attested in the Italian Treebank appear with those elements.
det:predet: predeterminer
A predeterminer is the relation between the head of an NP and a word that precedes and modifies the meaning of the NP determiner. In Italian this relation is used for the lemmas tutto, entrambi and ambedue (all and both), when they appear in front of another determiner.
discourse: discourse element
This is used for interjections and other discourse particles and elements (which are not clearly linked to the structure of the sentence, except in an expressive way). In Italian the use of discourse is attested for interjections (or nouns used as interjections) only, but is also generally recommended for emoticons or elements POS tagged as SYM not elsewhere classified.
dislocated: dislocated elements
dislocated is not used.
dobj: direct object
The direct object of a verb is the second most core argument of a verb after the subject. Typically, it is the noun phrase that denotes the entity acted upon or which undergoes a change of state or motion (the proto-patient). A direct object is a nominal which is the (accusative) object of the verbal predicate.
The dobj relation is also used to mark real reflexive constructions where the clitic pronoun is a direct object of the verb.
dobj is also used in those cases where the direct object has no independent semantic value but it creates a unique semantic element together with the verb.
expl: expletive
This relation captures expletive or pleonastic nominals. These are nominals that appear in an argument position of a predicate but which do not themselves satisfy any of the semantic roles of the predicate. The main predicate of the clause (the verb or predicate adjective) is the governor. In Italian, this relation is used only with clitic pronouns in the following cases:
- Pronouns in pronominal verbs which do not have a semantic role, such as si in vergognarsi.
- For verbs which are true reflexives.
- Existential construction with verb to be (c’è, ci sono).
NB Whenever possible, clitic pronouns are assigned a label that reflect their grammatical function. For this reason, if the pronoun appears in a reflexive construction of a transitive or intransitive active verb, than it’s treated as dobj or iobj.
In Italian clitics also appears in passive and impersonal constructions. For that, see the subclasses expl:pass and expl:impers.
expl:impers: expletive impersonal
The relation expl:impers is a sub-class of expl, specific for the impersonal use of the clitic pronoun si. We can have an impersonal construction for every verb (transitive or intransitive) when the role of subject is played by the clitic itself, as an undefined subject.
If there’s a clitic in a construction with a modal or an auxiliary verb, than generally it is an impersonal construction.
In the construction with both ci and si (construction of the impersonal ci), the first clitic is marked as expl, while si as expl:impers, as follows.
expl:pass: expletive passive
The relation expl:pass is a sub-class of expl, specific for the passivizing use of the clitic si. We can have this construction only for transitive verbs at the 3° singular or plural person form. The verb comes with the clitic pronoun, which does not cover any syntactic or semantic role of the verb. The role of subject is played by the syntactic object, which becomes a passive subject (nsubjpass).
foreign: foreign words
We use foreign to label sequences of foreign words. These are given a linear analysis: the head is the first token in the foreign phrase.
In the Italian Treebank, the only cases attested appear with words POS tagged as X. The only exception to that happens when foreign proper names are part of a sequence of foreign words (as in the last example).
goeswith: goes with
goeswith is not used.
iobj: indirect object
The indirect object of a verb is a pronominal complement which corresponds to a dative object. In Italian the iobj only appears as clitic pronoun because when the indirect object is realized as a prepositional phrase, it is labeled as nmod (ex. Dare a qualcuno qualcosa, give something to someone).
list: list
list is not used. We analyse items in a list as separate sentences or conjunctions.
mark: marker
A marker is the word introducing a finite clause subordinate to another clause. Similar to case, it can be a preposition, a subordinate conjunction or an adverb. Unlike case though, it introduces clauses, not complements. The mark element is a dependent of the subordinate clause head.
It is used also on the head of mwe relations when they refer to verbs.
mwe: multi-word expression
The multi-word expression (modifier) relation is one of the three relations (compound, mwe, name) for compounding. It is used for certain fixed grammaticized expressions that behave like function words or short adverbials. Any grammatical class can take part in a multiword expression, but usually they are a combination of adverbials and prepositions (usually a or di).
Some of the most common mwe for Italian are listed in the examples below.
name: name
name is one of the three relations for compounding in UD (together with compound and mwe). It is used for proper nouns constituted of multiple nominal elements. It is not used to replace the usual relations in a phrasal or clausal name, like titles of books, where the actual dependencies should be preserved.
Names are annotated in a flat, head-initial structure, in which all words in the name modify the first one using the name label. This also works for prepostions or determiners and numerals that are part of the names.
Words joined by name should all be part of a minimal noun phrase; otherwise regular syntactic relations should be used. For organization names with clear syntactic modification structure, the dependencies should reflect the syntactic modification structure using regular syntactic relation.
In addition, regular syntactic relations are used:
- for a modifying determiner or
- to connect together the words of a description or name which involve embedded prepositional phrases, sentences, etc.
neg: negation modifier
The negation modifier is the relation between a negation word and the word it modifies. Modifiers labeled neg depend either on a noun (group “noun dependents”) or on a predicate (group “non-core dependents of clausal predicates”).
All the instances of neg relation in Italian apply to POS ADV elements.
nmod: nominal modifier
The nmod relation is used for nominal modifiers. They depend either on another noun (group “noun dependents”) or on a predicate (group “non-core dependents of clausal predicates”).
In Italian, nmod is used for non-prepositional and prepositional complements; the most common complements are temporal, place and specification.
nsubj: nominal subject
A nominal subject (nsubj) is a nominal which is the syntactic subject of a clause. The governor of this relation is typically a verb with an exceptions: when the verb is a copular verb, the nsubj relation is headed by the complement of the copular verb, which can be an adjective or a noun.
The nsubj role is only applied to semantic arguments of a predicate. When there is an empty argument in a grammatical subject position (sometimes called a pleonastic or expletive), it is labeled as expl or better expl:impers
NB
Note that when the verb is used in the passive voice the nominal syntactic subject is marked as nsubjpass.
When the subject is clausal, it’s preferable to use other specialized relations (csubj or csubjpass).
nsubjpass: passive nominal subject
A passive nominal subject is a noun phrase which is the syntactic subject of a passive clause (or more generally, any voice where the proto-agent argument does not become the subject of the clause).
nummod: numeric modifier
A numeric modifier of a noun is any number phrase that serves to modify the meaning of the noun with a quantity, both when the number is written in letters.
In Italian this relation is only attested for POS NUM elements, so please do not use it with indefinite quantifiers, which are DET elements.
Please note that ,in dates, years should be marked as nmod, while the day is a numeric modifier. The month is the head.
There are very few cases where nummod is used to mark indices of lists.
parataxis: parataxis
The parataxis relation (from Greek for “place side by side”) is a relation between a word (often the main predicate of a sentence) and other elements, such as a sentential parenthetical or a clause after a “:” or a “;”, placed side by side without any explicit coordination, subordination, or argument relation with the head word. In Italian it is used with direct dialogs, introduced by declarative verbs, or lists.
punct: punctuation
This element is used for any piece of punctuation in a clause.
The last punctuation mark of the sentence (usually a full stop or interrogative/exclamation point) always depends on the root; commas, apexes and punctuation elements depend on the head of the clause, or the complement, they refer to. In general, tokens with the relation punct always attach to content words (except in cases of ellipsis) and can never have dependents on their own.
Punctuation marks separating coordinated units must be all attached to the first conjunct.
remnant: remnant in ellipsis
remnant is not used.
reparandum: overridden disfluency
reparandum is not used.
root: root
The root grammatical relation points to the root of the sentence, so there’s only one root for each sentence. In Italian the root is usually a verbal predicate, unless we are analysing a nominal phrase, where the root is a noun.
If the main predicate is not present due to ellipsis and there are multiple orphaned dependents, the leftmost dependent should be promoted to the head (root) position and the other orphans should be attached to it.
vocative: vocative
The vocative relation is used to mark a dialogue participant addressed in a text (common in conversations, dialogue, emails, newsgroup postings, etc.).
The relation links the addressee’s name to its host sentence.
If the nominal is clearly vocative in intent, it is preferable to use the vocative relation.
A vocative commonly co-occurs with a null subject.
xcomp: open clausal complement
An open clausal complement (xcomp) of a verb, or an adjective, is a predicative or clausal complement without its own subject. The reference of the subject is necessarily determined by an argument external to the xcomp (usually by the object, if there is one, or else by the subject of the next higher clause). This reference is often referred to as obligatory control, that is there should be no available interpretation where the subject of the lower clause may be distinct from the specified role of the upper clause (in case the subject may or must be distinct from the subject of the higher clause, ccomp should be used).
The predicates of these clauses appear always as a non finite verbs or participle, and they are core complements (arguments of the higher verb or adjective) rather than adjuncts/modifiers.
The xcomp relation is also used in constructions that are known as secondary predicates or predicatives.
NB xcomp can be used only when the element is a core argument of a clausal predicate. If the element is not a core argument acl should be used. Consider the example below, where we have a case of double predication (Sono stati ritrovati. They were found. Erano sani e salvi. They were safe and sound). But sani e salvi is not a core argument of ritrovare: leaving it out will neither affect grammaticality nor significantly alter the meaning of the verb.