Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Plea for a Deep Dependency Sentence Structure

The aim of the contribution is to bring arguments for a description for natural language that (i) includes a representation (i) of a deep (underlying) sentence structure and (ii) is based on the relation of dependency. Our argumentation rests on linguistic considerations and stems from the Praguian linguistic background, both with respect to the Praguian structuralist tradition as well as to the formal framework of Functional Generative Description and to the experience with building the Prague Dependency Treebank. The arguments, of course, are not novel but we will try to gather and report on our experience when working with deep syntactic dependency relations in the description of language; the basic material will be Czech but multilingual comparative aspects will be taken into account as well.