On the relation between dependency distance, crossing dependencies, and parsing: Comment on “Dependency distance: a new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages” by Haitao Liu et al.

Abstract

Liu et al. (2017) provide a comprehensive account of research on dependency distance in human languages. While the article is a very rich and useful report on this complex subject, here I will expand on a few specific issues where research in computational linguistics (specifically natural language processing) can inform DDM research, and vice versa. These aspects have not been explored much in the article by Liu et al. or elsewhere, probably due to the little overlap between both research communities, but they may provide interesting insights for improving our understanding of the evolution of human languages, the mechanisms by which the brain processes and understands language, and the construction of effective computer systems to achieve this goal.