Dominance

Dominance is the relation between two nodes in a tree structure. A node "dominates" another node if it is above it in the tree (it is a parent, grandparent, etc). In the UNL^arium framework, dominance is used to represent the structure of maximal projections and, therefore, to state the degree of adjacency (i.e., the order) of constituents in relation to the head. Dominance is represented in the dictionary, in case of compound words that do not follow general dominance rules, or in the grammar, otherwise. Dominance is not represented in UNL.

Types of dominance

In the UNL^arium framework, syntactic relations are described in terms of a general tree structure: the X-bar, depicted below.

    XP
   / \
spec  XB
     / \
    XB  adjt
   / \
  X   comp

In the X-bar structure, the node XP dominates all other nodes; the higher XB dominates the nodes adjt, lower XB, comp and X (head); the lower XB dominates the nodes comp and X; and the nodes spec, adjt, comp and X do not dominate any node.