where the presence of character < means that w i−1 has an incoming arc from the right, k copies of character \ mean that w i has k outgoing arcs towards the left, k copies of / mean that w i−1 has k outgoing arcs towards the right, and the presence of > means that w i has an incoming arc from the left.
each right dependency from a word i to j is encoded by a (/, >) pair in the label components x i+1 and x j , and each left dependency from j to i by a (<, \) pair in the label components x i+1 and x j .