compilation problem on DEC Alpha

hello, I am trying to compile Amaya 2.2 on my DEC Alpha 
(DEC Unix 4.0D I think), but have encountered the following error message;

rotari % make all
Make: Cannot open .depends.  Stop.
*** Exit 1
Stop.
*** Exit 1
Stop.

when I ran the configure script, I did get the following warning;

checking for Motif... (cached) libraries /usr/lib, headers /usr/include
configure: warning: Thot editor sources not found

I took a quick look around the Makefile and Options files, but did not
see what is going wrong. I guess that the following chunk of various
Makefiles is not working properly;

.depends depend : ../../tools/mkdep/mkdep
        ../../tools/mkdep/mkdep -relative -vpath $(VPATH) $(INCLUDES) $(VPATH)/*
.c  > .depends

there is no .depends file being generated. I'm not very experienced with
makefile debugging. any suggestions for things to try?

thanx