Link grammar

Link grammar (LG) is a theory of syntax by Davy Temperley and Daniel Sleator which builds relations between pairs of words, rather than constructing constituents in a phrase structure hierarchy. Link grammar is similar to dependency grammar, but dependency grammar includes a head-dependent relationship, whereas Link Grammar makes the head-dependent relationship optional (links need not indicate direction). Colored Multiplanar Link Grammar (CMLG) is an extension of LG allowing crossing relations between pairs of words. The relationship between words is indicated with link types, thus making the Link grammar closely related to certain categorial grammars.

For example, in a subject–verb–object language like English, the verb would look left to form a subject link, and right to form an object link. Nouns would look right to complete the subject link, or left to complete the object link.

In a subject–object–verb language like Persian, the verb would look left to form an object link, and a more distant left to form a subject link. Nouns would look to the right for both subject and object links.

Link grammar connects the words in a sentence with links, similar in form to a catena. Unlike the catena or a traditional dependency grammar, the marking of the head-dependent relationship is optional for most languages, becoming mandatory only in free-word-order languages (such as Turkish,Finnish, Hungarian, Lithuanian). That is, in English, the subject-verb relationship is "obvious", in that the subject is almost always to the left of the verb, and thus no specific indication of dependency needs to be made. In the case of subject-verb inversion, a distinct link type is employed. For free word-order languages, this can no longer hold, and a link between the subject and verb must contain an explicit directional arrow to indicate which of the two words is which.