Syntactic Polygraphs. A Formalism Extending Both Constituency and Dependency

Syntactic analyses describe grouping operations that explain how words are combined to form utterances. The nature of these operations depends on the approach. In a constituency-based approach, grouping operations are ordered, or stratified, part-whole relations. In a dependency-based approach, grouping operations identify a governor (or head), i.e. they are directed hierarchical relations between words. It is possible to convert a constituency tree into a dependency tree by dereifying the nodes, by identifying the governor and by removing the stratification of the part-whole relations. Polygraphs combine the two types of information into a single structure and are therefore a more powerful formalism. By relaxing constraints, polygraphs also allow to underspecify both kinds of information.