Editing Link grammar (section)

{{Short description|Theory of syntax}}
{{Cleanup bare URLs|date=May 2025}}
'''Link grammar''' (LG) is a theory of [[syntax]] by Davy Temperley and [[Daniel Sleator]] which builds relations between pairs of words, rather than constructing constituents in a [[Parse tree|phrase structure]] hierarchy.  Link grammar is similar to [[dependency grammar]], but dependency grammar includes a head-dependent relationship, whereas link grammar makes the head-dependent relationship optional (links need not indicate direction).<ref name=biblio>{{cite web |author=Daniel Sleator |date=September 8, 2004 |url=http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/papers/index.html |title=Link Grammar Bibliography |website=cmu.edu |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref>  Colored Multiplanar Link Grammar (CMLG) is an extension of LG allowing crossing relations between pairs of words.<ref>{{Cite conference |author1=Anssi Yli-Jyrä |author2=Matti Nykänen |name-list-style=amp |title=A Hierarchy of Mildly Context-Sensitive Dependency Grammars |editor=G. P. Gerhard Jäger, Paola Monachesi and S. Wintner |book-title=Proceedings of the 9th conference on Formal Grammar 2004 "FGNancy". Pre-Proceedings. |year=2004 |pages=151–165 |url= http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~aylijyra/dissertation/5.pdf}}</ref> The relationship between words is indicated with [[type theory|link types]], thus making the Link grammar closely related to certain [[categorial grammar]]s.

For example, in a [[subject–verb–object]] language like English, the verb would look left to form a subject link, and right to form an object link.  Nouns would look right to complete the subject link, or left to complete the object link.

In a [[subject–object–verb]] language like [[Persian language|Persian]], the verb would look left to form an object link, and a more distant left to form a subject link.  Nouns would look to the right for both subject and object links.