Exam question 4 · Fairy Tales (pg640), The Magic Ring, part 5: the youth ste…

What obstacle prevented the removal of the iron horse by ordinary men?

Mova's choice: option 4 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: obstacle · What happens: prevent, remove · To what, where: removal, iron horse

This is exam question 4 of lesson 1681 «Fairy Tales (pg640), The Magic Ring, part 5: the youth steals the ring and gets ready to fight the Dragon» of the books course of Mova's primary school, asked in stiff, formal language. The page gives the question's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause, then the 4 options as the student saw them, each with its tree and pragmatics. Every text is parsed by Mova itself. How the student answered it, with the score of every option and why: the test at school.

The question

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	What	what	DET	PronType=Int	2 obstacle	det
2	obstacle	obstacle	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 prevented	nsubj
3	prevented	prevent	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 removal	det
5	removal	removal	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 prevented	obj
6	of	of	ADP	_	9 horse	case
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 horse	det
8	iron	iron	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 horse	compound
9	horse	horse	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 removal	nmod
10	by	by	ADP	_	12 men	case
11	ordinary	ordinary	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 men	amod
12	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 prevented	obl
13	?	?	PUNCT	_	3 prevented	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	prevent	past	what obstacle	the removal of the iron horse				by ordinary men	vn forbid-64.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Causer removal=Theme
2	remove			the iron horse					nom removal «act transitive»: of=patient

One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

The options

Option 1

The horse's excessive weight and its rust

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 horse	det
2	horse	horse	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 weight	nmod:poss
3	's	's	PART	_	2 horse	case
4	excessive	excessive	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 weight	amod
5	weight	weight	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 rust	cc
7	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 rust	nmod:poss
8	rust	rust	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 weight	conj

The frames reader finds no event or fact in this sentence.

Option 2

Its hidden enchantment

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 enchantment	nmod:poss
2	hidden	hidden	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 enchantment	amod
3	enchantment	enchantment	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	enchant		Its = it						nom enchantment «feeling transitive»: poss=agent

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

Its excessive weight

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 weight	nmod:poss
2	excessive	excessive	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 weight	amod
3	weight	weight	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

The frames reader finds no event or fact in this sentence.

Option 4 · ← Mova's choice

Its heavy iron

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 iron	nmod:poss
2	heavy	heavy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 iron	amod
3	iron	iron	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

The frames reader finds no event or fact in this sentence.

Text: the tests of Mova's primary school, written for Mova (world/data/school/), as the course runner gave them to the student. Trees: Mova's own parse — the en model on the CPU, when the site is built — not checked by a teacher; they may be wrong. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), each text read on its own. Elamur Cosmic License.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/questions/books/1681-pg640-part5/e4/