Exam question 4 · Roumanian Fairy Tales, Stan Bolovan, part 20: Stan wants c…

What was the nature of the dragon's mother as described upon Stan's arrival?

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: nature, Stan · What happens: be, describe, arrive · To what, where: mother

This is exam question 4 of lesson 1769 «Roumanian Fairy Tales, Stan Bolovan, part 20: Stan wants children, gets a hundred, and meets a 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	PRON	PronType=Int	root	root
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 What	cop
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 nature	det
4	nature	nature	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 What	nsubj
5	of	of	ADP	_	9 mother	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 dragon	det
7	dragon	dragon	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 mother	nmod:poss
8	's	's	PART	_	7 dragon	case
9	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 nature	nmod
10	as	as	SCONJ	_	11 described	mark
11	described	describe	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	9 mother	acl
12	upon	upon	ADP	_	15 arrival	case
13	Stan	Stan	PROPN	Number=Sing	15 arrival	nmod:poss
14	's	's	PART	_	13 Stan	case
15	arrival	arrival	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 described	obl
16	?	?	PUNCT	_	1 What	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a	past	the nature of the dragon's mother			tree rules
2	describe	participle		the dragon's mother not said here	upon Stan's arrival	vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent
3	arrive		Stan			nom arrival «act intransitive»: poss=agent

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 · ← Mova's choice

She was ancient

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	She	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 ancient	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 ancient	cop
3	ancient	ancient	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	She					ancient property	tree rules

Option 2

She was very old

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	She	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 old	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 old	cop
3	very	very	ADV	_	4 old	advmod
4	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	She					old property	tree rules

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

She was as old as time itself

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	She	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 old	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 old	cop
3	as	as	ADV	_	4 old	advmod
4	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	as	as	ADP	_	6 time	case
6	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 old	obl
7	itself	itself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Emp Reflex=Yes	6 time	nmod:unmarked

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	She				time	old property	tree rules

Option 4

She was older than the hills

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	She	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 older	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 older	cop
3	older	old	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	root	root
4	than	than	ADP	_	6 hills	case
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 hills	det
6	hills	hill	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 older	obl

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	She					than the hills; old property	tree rules

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/1769-pg641-part20/e4/