Universal Dependencies v1: A Multilingual Treebank Collection

Abstract

Cross-linguistically consistent annotation is necessary for sound comparative evaluation and cross-lingual learning experiments. It is also useful for multilingual system development and comparative linguistic studies. Universal Dependencies is an open community effort to create cross-linguistically consistent treebank annotation for many languages within a dependency-based lexicalist framework. In this paper, we describe v1 of the universal guidelines, the underlying design principles, and the currently available treebanks for 33 languages.