Movement arrows in syntax

Question

Can anybody recognize the package that is used to produce these cool arrows? This particular one is taken from https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004081 but I've seen it many times in syntax papers, with lots of variations. No idea what it is other than some other features of the papers I've seen it in seem to be working under XeLaTeX (judging by other packages that don't easily work under LaTeX).

Answer 1

Many years ago I promised in a comment to turn an answer to a similar question into a package.

• Movement arrow in gloss

Your question has spurred me on to actually make good on that promise ten years later. The movement-arrows package is now available on CTAN, and if you have a current year TeXLive or MikTeX it can be installed as a regular update to your distribution. The code in the package departs substantially from the code in the answer, thanks to the tikz-extra suite of TikZ libraries.

The basic idea remains the same: you markup words as nodes using a \mkword macro and then use an \mvarrow command to add the arrows. The \mkword macro uses word as the node name if provided with a single argument. If the word argument is a phrase or contains other markup (subscripts, formatting, etc.) you must provide an explicit node name using the optional argument.

The \mvarrow macro takes two nodes and connects them. The optional argument allows you to add the circled label using circ=<label>. circ is a TikZ style, and so other types of labels can be created as needed.

\mkword[<name>]{<word>}
\mvarrow[circ=<label>]{<from-name>}{<to-name} % under arrow
\mvarrow*[circ=<label>]{<from-name>}{<to-name} % over arrow

Here's the example from Nevins and Weisser (a topic close to my heart!) For compatibility with other packages, I've not used the \automath function of gb4e which allows for _ and ^ in regular text but instead used a \sb macro.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{movement-arrows}
\usepackage{gb4e}
\let\sb\textsubscript
\begin{document}
\begin{exe}
\ex This is an example.
\end{exe}
\begin{exe}
\sn
\ex{[ [\sb{ConjP} [ \mkword[NP1]{NP\sb{1}} [\sb{Conj'} in \mkword[NP2]{NP\sb{2}} ] ] \textsc{aux}  \mkword{V} \dots}
\mvarrow*[circ=1]{V}{NP1}
\mvarrow[red,circ=2]{V}{NP2}
\end{exe}
\end{document}

For arrows with glossed examples, the gloss line needs to be preceded by the \glossarrow command to make the appropriate amount of space for the arrow. Arrows above the words can use an \arrowstrut command to add more vertical space.

Here's the same example using linguex. I've created a version of the \sn macro that adds some vertical space before the example using the over-arrow. This stops the arrow from encroaching on the previous example.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{movement-arrows}
\usepackage{linguex}
\let\sb\textsubscript
\begin{document}
\ex. This is an example.
\ex.
\arrowstrut
{[ [\sb{ConjP} [ \mkword[NP1]{NP\sb{1}} [\sb{Conj'} in
   \mkword[NP2]{NP\sb{2}} ] ] \textsc{aux}  \mkword{V} \dots}
\arrow*[circ=1]{V}{NP1}
\arrow[red,circ=2]{V}{NP2}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Maybe this approach could be useful

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz-cd}
\begin{document}
[
\begin{tikzcd}[column sep=tiny]
  & {} & {}\
  A & B\ar[u, phantom, ""{coordinate, name=b}] & C\ar[d, phantom, ""{coordinate, name=a}]
  & D
  \ar[ll,"1"{pos=0.75,description,shape=circle,draw=white,double=black,double distance=0.4pt,inner sep=1pt},to path={
      -- (\tikztostart.north)
      |- (b) \tikztonodes
      -| (\tikztotarget.north)
  }] 
  \ar[l,"2"{pos=0.75,description,shape=circle,draw=white,double=black,double distance=0.4pt,inner sep=1pt},to path={
      -- (\tikztostart.south)
      |- (a) \tikztonodes
      -| (\tikztotarget.south)
  }]
\
  && {}
\end{tikzcd}
]
\end{document}