English

A Fundamental Algorithm for Dependency Parsing (With Corrections)

Computation and Language 2025-10-24 v1

Abstract

This paper presents a fundamental algorithm for parsing natural language sentences into dependency trees. Unlike phrase-structure (constituency) parsers, this algorithm operates one word at a time, attaching each word as soon as it can be attached, corresponding to properties claimed for the parser in the human brain. Like phrase-structure parsing, its worst-case complexity is O(n3)O(n^3), but in human language, the worst case occurs only for small nn.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.19996,
  title  = {A Fundamental Algorithm for Dependency Parsing (With Corrections)},
  author = {Michael A. Covington},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.19996},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Corrected version of an already widely cited paper

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:00:45.380Z