Editing Parse tree (section)

==Dependency-based parse trees==
The dependency-based parse trees of [[dependency grammar]]s<ref>See for example Ágel et al. 2003/2006.</ref> see all nodes as terminal, which means they do not acknowledge the distinction between terminal and non-terminal categories. They are simpler on average than constituency-based parse trees because they contain fewer nodes. The dependency-based parse tree for the example sentence above is as follows:

:::[[File:Parse2.jpg|Parse tree DG]]

This parse tree lacks the phrasal categories (S, VP, and NP) seen in the constituency-based counterpart above. Like the constituency-based tree, [[constituent (linguistics)|constituent]] structure is acknowledged. Any complete sub-tree of the tree is a constituent. Thus this dependency-based parse tree acknowledges the subject noun ''John'' and the object noun phrase ''the ball'' as constituents just like the constituency-based parse tree does.

The constituency vs. dependency distinction is far-reaching. Whether the additional syntactic structure associated with constituency-based parse trees is necessary or beneficial is a matter of debate.