The dependency approach to grammar, in which it is assumed that grammatical relations can be described in terms of a relation between two element types, a head and a dependent, is discussed in the context of Arabic. Operational criteria used for defining the notions of head and dependency are reviewed, and claims for the usefulness of recognizing head and dependent elements are evaluated. It is concluded that none of the syntactic criteria achieves the desired results and that in general a grammar can be constructed without recognizing head and dependent as primitive constructs. It is also argued that while the notion of dependency is useful, it should be understood simply as a bilateral relation between grammar items. (MSE)