Dependency grammar

Dependency grammar is a way to understand how words in a sentence work together. Imagine you are building a tower with blocks. Each block needs to be supported by another block to stay in place. In a sentence, each word also needs to be supported by another word for it to make sense. In dependency grammar, we call these supports 'dependencies.'

Each word in a sentence has one main dependency, called its 'head.' This is the word it depends on the most. For example, in the sentence "The cat sat on the mat," the word 'sat' is the head of the sentence, and all the other words depend on it.

To show the relationships between the words and their dependencies, we draw arrows between them. The arrow points from the dependent word to its head. So, for example, in "The cat sat on the mat," we would draw an arrow from 'cat' to 'sat,' an arrow from 'sat' to 'mat,' and so on.

Using dependency grammar, we can understand how different words relate to each other in a sentence. By analyzing the dependencies, we can also identify the subject, object, and verb in a sentence. This helps us understand the meaning of the sentence better.

Overall, dependency grammar is like a blueprint that helps us understand how each word in a sentence fits together and depends on other words to create meaning.