Heads and Dependents
The importance of the syntactic functions (= grammatical relations) reaches its greatest extent in dependency grammar (DG) theories of syntax. Every head-dependent dependency bears a syntactic function. The result is that an inventory consisting of dozens of distinct syntactic functions is needed for each language. For example, a determiner-noun dependency might be assumed to bear the DET (determiner) function, and an adjective-noun dependency is assumed to bear the ATTR (attribute) function. These functions are often produced as labels on the dependencies themselves in the syntactic tree, e.g.
The tree contains the following syntactic functions: ATTR (attribute), CCOMP (clause complement), DET (determiner), MOD (modifier), OBJ (object), SUBJ (subject), and VCOMP (verb complement). The actual inventories of syntactic functions will differ from the one suggested here in the number and types of functions that are assumed. In this regard, this tree is merely intended to be illustrative of the importance that the syntactic functions can take on in some theories of syntax and grammar.
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Relation
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