dependency parsing

**Dependency Parsing** is a **syntactic analysis task that extracts the grammatical structure of a sentence by identifying binary relationships (dependencies) between "head" words and "dependent" words** — representing the sentence as a directed graph (tree) where edges have labels like "subject", "object", "modifier". **Structure** - **Head**: The governor of the relation (e.g., the main verb). - **Dependent**: The modifier (e.g., the subject noun). - **Root**: The central node of the sentence (usually the main verb). - **Example**: "John hit the ball." (hit $ o$ John [nsubj], hit $ o$ ball [dobj], ball $ o$ the [det]). **Why It Matters** - **Information Extraction**: "Who did what to whom?" is directly answered by the (Subject, Verb, Object) edges. - **Free Word Order**: Better for languages with free word order (Russian, Latin) than Constituency Parsing. - **Efficiency**: Linear-time transition-based parsers are very fast. **Dependency Parsing** is **connecting specific words** — defining grammar as a web of relationships between individual words rather than nested phrases.