«Are you Afraid of Ghosts?» A Proposal for Busting Predicate Ellipsis in Universal Dependencies

Claudia Corbetta, Federica Iurescia, Marco Carlo Passarotti


Abstract
This paper addresses the representation of ellipsis in dependency syntax, proposing both a theoretical and a practical workflow for its analysis and annotation in treebanks, following the state-of-the-art Universal Dependencies framework. We discuss the challenges of annotating ellipsis, with a focus on predicate ellipsis and its representation in dependency treebanks, and emphasize the importance of accounting for such phenomena for syntactic analysis and machine learning applications. We present a case study based on the Italian-Old treebank, demonstrating the applicability of the proposed workflows and invite the community to participate in this initiative with their own languages.
Anthology ID:
2025.tlt-1.6
Volume:
Proceedings of the 23rd International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2025)
Month:
August
Year:
2025
Address:
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Editors:
Sarah Jablotschkin, Sandra Kübler, Heike Zinsmeister
Venues:
TLT | WS | SyntaxFest
SIG:
SIGPARSE
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
52–63
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.tlt-1.6/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Claudia Corbetta, Federica Iurescia, and Marco Carlo Passarotti. 2025. «Are you Afraid of Ghosts?» A Proposal for Busting Predicate Ellipsis in Universal Dependencies. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2025), pages 52–63, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
«Are you Afraid of Ghosts?» A Proposal for Busting Predicate Ellipsis in Universal Dependencies (Corbetta et al., TLT-SyntaxFest 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.tlt-1.6.pdf