The notion of dependencies between grammatical units has existed since the earliest recorded grammars, e.g. Pāṇini, and the dependency concept therefore arguably predates that of phrase structure by many centuries.

Dependency is a one-to-one correspondence: for every element (e.g. word or morph) in the sentence, there is exactly one node in the structure of that sentence that

There are various conventions that DGs employ to represent dependencies. The following schemata (in addition to the tree above and the trees

Traditionally, DGs have had a different approach to linear order (word order) than phrase structure grammars. Dependency structures are minimal compared to their phrase structure

The following frameworks are dependency-based:
Algebraic syntax Operator grammar Link grammar Functional

The dependency representations above (and further below) show syntactic dependencies. Indeed, most work in dependency grammar

Traditionally, DGs have treated the syntactic functions (= grammatical functions, grammatical relations) as primitive. They posit an inventory of functions (e.g. subject,