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LaTeX/Linguistics
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The latest reviewed version was checked on 28 November 2014. There is 1 pending change awaiting review.
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There are a number of LaTeX packages available for writing linguistics papers. Various
packages have been created for enumerated examples, syntactic trees, OT tableaux, feature

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matrices, IPA fonts, and many other applications. Some packages such as the tipa package are

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effectively standard within the field, while others will vary by author preference.

Recent changes

Some recommended packages[1]:

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Glosses: gb4e or Covington;

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IPA symbols: tipa;

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OT Tableaux: OTtablx;
Syntactic trees: qtree + tree-dvips (for drawing arrows);

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Alternatively, xyling is very powerful but not as user friendly as qtree;

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The xy package itself has a steep learning curve, but allows a lot of control; for simplest trees use the xymatrix
feature and arrows;

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tikz-qtree

has the same syntax as qtree, but uses PGF/TikZ, which allows more options for drawing arrows, etc.

Dependency trees and bubble parses:

The TikZ-dependency package provides a high-level, convenient interface to draw dependency graphs. It is
based on PGF/TikZ but does not require prior knowledge of TikZ in order to be used productively.

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Attribute-Value Matrices (AVMs): avm

Special pages

John Frampton's expex: expex

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Cite this page

1 Enumerated examples
1.1 gb4e

Languages

1.2 lingmacros

Add links

2 Syntactic trees
2.1 Constituent trees
2.1.1 qtree

Sister projects
Wikipedia
Wikiversity

2.1.2 tikz-qtree

Wiktionary

2.2 Dependency Trees

2.2.1 Two-dimensional Dependency Trees

Wikiquote
Wikisource
Wikinews

2.2.2 Dependency Trees as Brackets above Text

Wikivoyage

2.2.3 Dependency Trees using TikZ-dependency

3 Glosses
3.1 With gb4e

Commons
Wikidata

3.2 With lingmacros

Print/export

4 IPA characters
4.1 Basic symbols

Create a collection
Download as PDF

5 References

Printable version

6 External links

Enumerated examples

[edit]

There are several commonly used packages for creating the kinds of numbered examples that are used in linguistics
publications.

gb4e

[edit]

The gb4e package[2] is called with:

\usepackage{gb4e}
IMPORTANT: If you use gb4e package, let it be the last \usepackage call in the document's preamble. Otherwise you
may get exceeded parameter stack size error.
Examples for this package are placed within the exe environment, and each example is introduced with the \ex command.

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\begin{exe}
\ex This is an example.
\end{exe}
produces:

Multiple examples can be included within the environment, and each will have its own number.
\begin{exe}
\ex This is the first example.
\ex This is the second example.
\ex This is the third.
\end{exe}
produces:

To create nested lists of examples, the xlist enviroment is used.

\begin{exe}
\ex \begin{xlist}
\ex This is a sub-example.
\ex This is a second sub-example.
\ex \begin{xlist}
\ex This is a sub-sub-example.
\ex This is a second sub-sub-example.
\end{xlist}
\end{xlist}

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\end{xlist}
\end{exe}
produces:

For notating acceptability judgments, the \ex command can take an optional argument. When including a judgment
marker, the corresponding sentence must be surrounded by braces.
\begin{exe}
\ex This sentence is grammatical English.
\ex[*] {This sentence English in ungrammatical is.}
\end{exe}
produces:

Referencing examples in text works as it does in normal LaTeX documents. See the labeling and cross-referencing section
for more details.
\begin{exe}
\ex\label{ex1} Godzilla destroyed the city.
\ex\label{ex2} Godzilla roared.
\end{exe}
Sentence (\ref{ex1}) contains two arguments, but (\ref{ex2}) contains only one.

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Further details can be found in the full documentation available here .

lingmacros

[edit]

The lingmacros package[3] created by Emma Pease is an alternate method for example numbering. This package uses
two main commands, \enumsentence and \eenumsentence. The former is used for singleton examples, while the latter
command is used for nested examples.
\enumsentence{This is an example.}

\enumsentence{This is the first example.}

\enumsentence{This is the second example.}
\enumsentence{This is the third.}

Multiply nested examples make use of the normal LaTeX list environments.
\eenumsentence{\item This is a sub-example.
\item This is a second sub-example.
\item \begin{enumerate}
\item This is sub-sub-example.
\item This is a second sub-sub-example.
\end{enumerate}
}
produces:

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Full documentation can be found here .

Syntactic trees

[edit]

Often, linguists will have to illustrate the syntactic structure of a sentence. One device for doing this is through syntactic
trees. Unfortunately, trees look very different in different grammar formalisms, and different LaTeX packages are suited for
different formalisms.

Constituent trees [edit]

While there are several packages for drawing syntactic trees available for LaTeX, this article focuses on the qtree and
xyling packages.
qtree

[edit]

Drawing trees with qtree is relatively straightforward. First, the

qtree

package has to be included in the document's

preamble:
\usepackage{qtree}
A new tree is started using the \Tree command, each (sub-)tree is indicated by brackets [ ]. The root of a (sub-)tree is
always preceded by a ., leaf nodes are simply expressed by their labels.
For example, the following code
\Tree [.S [.NP LaTeX ] [.VP [.V is ] [.NP fun ] ] ]
produces this syntactic tree as output:
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Note that the spaces before the closing brackets are mandatory.
By default, qtree centers syntactic trees on the page. This behaviour can be turned off by either specifying the behaviour
when loading the package
\usepackage[nocenter]{qtree} % do not center trees
or via the command
\qtreecenterfalse % do not center trees from here on
anywhere in the document. The effect of the latter can be undone by using the command
\qtreecentertrue % center trees from here on
IMPORTANT: If you use gb4e package, let it be the last \usepackage call in the document's preamble. Otherwise you may
get exceeded parameter stack size error.
tikz-qtree

[edit]

Using the same syntax as qtree, tikz-qtree is another easy-to-use alternative for drawing syntactic trees.

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For simple trees, tikz-qtree is completely interchangable with qtree. However, some of qtree's advanced features are
implemented in a different way, or not at all. On the other hand, tikz-qtree provides other features such as controlling the
direction of the tree's growth (top to bottom, left to right etc.) or different styles for edges.
To use the

tikz-qtree

package for drawing trees, put the following into the document's preamble:

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{tikz-qtree}
The syntax of tikz-qtree and result when drawing a simple tree is the same as for

qtree .

\Tree [.S [.NP LaTeX ] [.VP [.V is ] [.NP fun ] ] ]

Note that, other than for qtree, trees are not centered by default. To center them, put them into a centered environment:
\begin{center}
\Tree [.S [.NP LaTeX ] [.VP [.V is ] [.NP fun ] ] ]
\end{center}
For setting the style of trees, tikz-qtree provides the \tikzset command. For example, to make a tree grow from left to right
instead of from top to bottom, use the following code:

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\tikzset{grow'=right} % make trees grow from left to right

\tikzset{every tree node/.style={anchor=base west}} % allign nodes of the tree to the left (west)
\Tree [.S [.NP LaTeX ] [.VP [.V is ] [.NP fun ] ] ]

The above code changes the default orientation for all trees that are defined after \tikzset commands. To only change the
direction of a single tree, it has to be put into a \tikzpicture environment:
\begin{tikzpicture} % all changes only affect trees within this environment
\tikzset{grow'=right} % make trees grow from left to right
\tikzset{every tree node/.style={anchor=base west}} % allign nodes of the tree to the left (west)
\Tree [.S [.NP LaTeX ] [.VP [.V is ] [.NP fun ] ] ]
\end{tikzpicture}

Dependency Trees [edit]

Dependency trees can take multiple visual forms. Commonly, they quite resemble phrase structure trees. Alternatively, they
can be captured by brackets drawn above running text.

Two-dimensional Dependency Trees [edit]

These can be either achieved using the fairly universal drawing package TikZ, like so:
% In the preamble:
\usepackage{tikz}
% In the document:
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node (is-root) {is}

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\node (is-root) {is}

[sibling distance=3cm]
child { node {this} }
child {
node {tree}
[sibling distance=1.5cm]
child { node {an} }
child { node {example} }
child { node {.} }
child[missing]
};
\path (is-root) +(0,-2.5\tikzleveldistance)
node {\textit{This is an example tree.}};
\end{tikzpicture}
which gives you the following drawing:

A dependency tree created using

TikZ

TikZ has the advantage that it allows for generating PDF directly from the LaTeX source, without need for any detour of
compiling to DVI using latex, and then converting to PDF probably via PS using tools such as dvips and ps2pdf. Latter
is the case of another package based on the package xy, namely xyling.
The code for a similar tree using xyling might look like:
% In the preamble:
\usepackage{xytree}

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% In the document:
\Tree{ & \K{is}\B{dl}\B{drr} \\
\K{this} &&& \K{tree}\B{dll}\B{dl}\B{dr} \\
& \K{an} & \K{example} && \K{.} }
\medskip
\textit{This is an example tree.}
which gives you a drawing like this:

A dependency tree created using

xyling

Dependency Trees as Brackets above Text [edit]

One way to typeset dependency brackets above running text is using the package xytree. It gives you fairly good control
of how the brackets are typeset but requires compiling the LaTeX code to DVI (and perhaps converting to PDF using the
tools dvips and ps2pdf later).
An example code:
% In the preamble:
\usepackage{xytree}
% In the document:
\xytext{
\xybarnode{Peter} &~~~&

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\xybarnode{Peter} &~~~&
\xybarnode{and}
\xybarconnect(UL,U){-2}"_{\small conj}"
\xybarconnect(UR,U){2}"^{\small conj}"
&~~~&
\xybarnode{Mary} &~~~&
\xybarnode{bought}
\xybarconnect[8](UL,U){-4}"_{\small subj}"
\xybarconnect[13]{6}"^{\small punct}"
\xybarconnect[8](UR,U){4}"^{\small obj}"
&~~~&
\xybarnode{a} &~~~&
\xybarnode{car}
\xybarconnect(UL,U){-2}"_{\small det}"
&~~~&
\xybarnode{.}
}
results in:

A dependency tree above running

text created using xytree

Dependency Trees using TikZ-dependency

[edit]

The package provides high level commands to design and style dependency graphs. To draw a graph, you only need to
create a dependency environment, write the text of the sentence within the deptext environment and use depedge
commands to draw the edges. Global and local optional parameters can be used to style and fine tune the looks of the
graph, as shown in the following example:
% In the preamble:
\usepackage{tikz-dependency}
% In the document:
\begin{dependency}[theme = simple]
\begin{deptext}[column sep=1em]

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\begin{deptext}[column sep=1em]
A \& hearing \& is \& scheduled \& on \& the \& issue \& today \& . \\
\end{deptext}
\deproot{3}{ROOT}
\depedge{2}{1}{ATT}
\depedge[edge start x offset=-6pt]{2}{5}{ATT}
\depedge{3}{2}{SBJ}
\depedge{3}{9}{PU}
\depedge{3}{4}{VC}
\depedge{4}{8}{TMP}
\depedge{5}{7}{PC}
\depedge[arc angle=50]{7}{6}{ATT}
\end{dependency}
This code snippet would produce the following result:

Glosses

[edit]

Below, it is explained how to make glossed examples with different packages.

With gb4e [edit]

To create a glossed example, use the normal exe environment. But after the \ex tag, introduce the example and its gloss
using \gll and the translation after it with \trans tag.
\begin{exe}
\ex

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\ex
\gll \\
cat.NOM eat.3.SG.PRS sour-cream.ACC\\
\trans `The cat eats sour cream'
\end{exe}
The code will produce the following output:

Vertically aligned glosses are separated by spaces, so if it's necessary to include a space in part the gloss, simply enclose
the connected parts inside braces.
\begin{exe}
\ex
\gll Pekka pel\"astyi karhusta.\\
Pekka {became afraid} bear.ELA\\
\trans `Pekka became afraid because of the/a bear.'
\end{exe}

With lingmacros [edit]

The lingmacros package uses the \shortex command to introduce glossed examples inside the \enumsentence and
\eenumsentence commands. This command takes four arguments and builds off the normal tabular environment. Its first
argument specifies the number of columns in the gloss. The second and third arguments give the text and its gloss
respectively, and items within each column are divided by the usual & tabular separator. The fourth argument is the
translation.
\enumsentence{\shortex{3}
{Pekka & pel\"astyi & karhu-sta.}
{Pekka & became afraid & bear.ELA}
{`Pekka became afraid because of the/a bear.'}

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{`Pekka became afraid because of the/a bear.'}

}

IPA characters

[edit]

The tipa package is the standard LaTeX package for International Phonetic Alphabet symbols.
\usepackage{tipa}

There are two methods for getting IPA symbols into a document. The first way is to use the IPA environment.
\begin{IPA}
text in IPA format here
\end{IPA}

This method is useful for long stretches of text that need to be in IPA. Alternatively, there is the \textipa command that
will format the text in its argument into IPA. This command is similar to other font typesetting commands.
\textipa{text in IPA format here}

Basic symbols [edit]

The IPA format works by translating ASCII characters into corresponding IPA symbols. Lower case letters are rendered as
usual,
\textipa{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}

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however capital letters are rendered differently.

\textipa{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}
produces:

Punctuation marks that are normally used in LaTeX are also rendered faithfully in the IPA environment.
\textipa{! * + = ? . , / [ ] ( ) ` ' | ||}
produces:

Numerals and @ also have variants in the tipa environment.

\textipa{1234567890 @}
produces:

In addition, there are a number of special macros for representing symbols that don't have other associations, some of
which are listed here. For a complete list see the official TIPA Manual[4].
The \; macro preceding a capital letter produces a small caps version of the letter.
\textipa{\;A \;B \;E \;G \;H \;I \;L \;R \;Y}

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produces:

The \: macro produces retroflex symbols.

\textipa{\:d \:l \:n \:r \:s \:t \:z}
gets you:

The \! macro produces implosive symbols and the bilabial click.

\textipa{\!b \!d \!g \!j \!G \!o}
gets you:

References

[edit]

1. [1]

LaTeX for Linguists presentation

2. [2]

The gb4e package on CTAN

3. [3]

The lingmacros package on CTAN

4. TIPA manual

External links

[edit]

LaTeX for Linguists

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The qtree package for drawing syntactic trees.

The gb4e package page on CTAN.

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Index

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Category: LaTeX

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