Word Grammar is a linguistic theory which best known as a variant of Dependency Grammar. However, it has a number of other properties, and its architectural assumptions are consistent with its theory of how human cognition works and its theory of how representations work. In this chapter we relate Word Grammar (WG) to a number of different trends in linguistic theorising and explain the various traditions that the theory belongs to. Word Grammar belongs in three main theoretical traditions: Dependency Grammars, Constraint-based Grammars and Cognitive Linguistics. We show how WG relates to these approaches and explore how the network model of linguistic representation adopted by WG relates to each tradition. The key claim of WG is that language is represented in a symbolic network, which is part of a more general human cognitive network and which is in a relationship with a discreet neural network.

The manuscript revisits the dependency vs. phrase structure debate that occurred in 1980–1 between Richard Hudson on the one hand and Östen Dahl and Pertti Hietaranta on the other. The debate is taken up first in the area of adjective scope. Dahl’s argument in favor of phrase structure based on adjective scope (e.g. ordinary French house) can be convincingly countered in terms of the component unit of dependency syntax. The component and two additional units of dependency syntax – the full component and the full catena – are presented and developed here. The claim is that the motivation for the layered trees of many phrase structure grammars disappears if the much flatter Dependency Grammar analyses acknowledge these units of dependency syntax. The overarching message, then, is that barring the analysis of coordinate structures, the theory of syntax does not need the higher nodes associated with phrase structure, in line with Hudson’s original message back in 1980.