conj: conjunct

A conjunct is the relation between two elements connected by a coordinating conjunction, such as and, or, etc. Coordinate structures are in principle symmetrical, but the first conjunction is by convention treated as the parent (or “technical head”) of all subsequent coordinated clauses via the conj relation.

Bill is big and honest
conj(big, honest)

Coordinated clauses are treated the same way as coordination of other constituent types:

He came home , took a shower and immediately went to bed .
conj(came, took)
conj(came, went)
punct(took, ,-4)
cc(went, and)

Coordination may be asyndetic, which means that the coordinating conjunction is omitted. Commas or other punctuation symbols will delimit the conjuncts in the typical case. Asyndetic coordination may be more frequent in some languages, while in others, conjunction will appear between every two conjuncts (John and Mary and Bill).

Veni , vidi , vici .
conj(Veni, vidi)
conj(Veni, vici)
punct(vidi, ,-2)
punct(vici, ,-4)

Shared Dependents and Effective Parents in Coordination

Note that the current basic annotation scheme cannot distinguish between a dependent of the first conjunct and a shared dependent of the whole coordination:

He met her at the station and kissed her .
conj(met, kissed)
nsubj(met, He)

vs.

He met her at the station and she kissed him .
conj(met, kissed)
nsubj(met, He)
nsubj(kissed, she)

In contrast, the additional dependencies in the enhanced representation can be used to encode the fact that in the first case, he is also subject of kissed:

He met her at the station and kissed her .
conj(met, kissed)
nsubj(met, He)
nsubj(kissed, He)

Furthermore, the enhanced representation can also capture the relation of each conjunct to the parent of the coordination. Nevertheless, the effective parents can be found algorithmically and showing them explicitly is for convenience only, while the information about shared dependents is otherwise not available.

I saw that he met her at the station and kissed her .
conj(met, kissed)
nsubj(met, he)
nsubj(kissed, he)
ccomp(saw, met)
ccomp(saw, kissed)

If a dependent is shared among conjuncts, the basic representation always links it to the first conjunct (coordination head), while the enhanced representation shows all dependencies. In the following example, relations that are only part of the enhanced representation are shown in red.

# visual-style 6 1 amod color:red
# visual-style 4 3 amod color:red
# visual-style 6 3 amod color:red
1 American   _ _ _ _ 4 amod 6:amod        _
2 and        _ _ _ _ 3 cc   _             _
3 British    _ _ _ _ 1 conj 4:amod|6:amod _
4 professors _ _ _ _ 0 root _             _
5 and        _ _ _ _ 6 cc   _             _
6 students   _ _ _ _ 4 conj 0:root        _

Nested Coordination

Note further that the basic annotation scheme has only a limited capability to capture nested coordination such as apples and pears or oranges and lemons. Consider coordinations

• A, B, C
• (A, B), C
• A, (B, C)

The first two cases, i.e., (A, B, C) and ((A, B), C), lead to the same tree:

A B C
conj(A, B)
conj(A, C)

Only the right-nesting case (A, (B, C)) can be distinguished because its tree is different:

A B C
conj(B, C)
conj(A, B)

Etc.

The item etc., used as a set-expander—especially in coordinations after at least two other items, and typically not preceded by a conjunction (though and etc. is attested in English)—is treated as a NOUN and final conjunct. Its distribution is, however, atypical of nouns in that it is restricted to enumeration contexts, does not permit modification except by reduplication, and may be post-coordinated with things that are not nominals. Note that this guideline applies to English and other languages that borrowed the string etc. from Latin. The situation may be different in languages that have their own equivalent of etc. For example, German usw. (und so weiter) and Czech atd. (a tak dále), both meaning literally “and so further”, are ADV rather than NOUN, because their main element is an adverb; yet they are still attached as conj to the head of the preceding list or coordination.

© 2014–2024 Universal Dependencies contributors. Site powered by Annodoc and brat