Test 9 · ★ · Uncle Remus, The Wonderful Tar Baby Story: Brer Rabbit get…

when mr dog came, did brer possum fight or play dead?

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: mr dog · What happens: come, do, play · To what, where: brer possum fight

This is test 9 · ★ of lesson 568 «Uncle Remus, The Wonderful Tar Baby Story: Brer Rabbit gets stuck fast to the Tar-Baby» of the books course of Mova's primary school. 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	when	when	SCONJ	_	4 came	mark
2	mr	mr	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 dog	compound
3	dog	dog	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 came	nsubj
4	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 did	advcl
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 came	punct
6	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	brer	br	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	9 fight	amod
8	possum	possum	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 fight	compound
9	fight	fight	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 did	obj
10	or	or	CCONJ	_	11 play	cc
11	play	play	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 fight	conj
12	dead	dead	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 play	xcomp
13	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 did	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	come	past	mr dog			vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	do	past		brer possum fight		vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fight=Eventuality
3	play	infinitive			dead property	vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=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

he fought

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 fought	nsubj
2	fought	fight	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	fight	past	he						vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent

Option 2

he climbed a tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 climbed	nsubj
2	climbed	climb	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 tree	det
4	tree	tree	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 climbed	obj

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	climb	past	he	a tree					vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial_Location tree=Theme

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

he played dead

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 played	nsubj
2	played	play	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	dead	dead	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 played	obj

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	play	past	he	dead					vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dead=Theme

Option 4

he fought the dog hard and then played dead

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 fought	nsubj
2	fought	fight	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 dog	det
4	dog	dog	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 fought	obj
5	hard	hard	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 fought	xcomp
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 played	cc
7	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	8 played	advmod
8	played	play	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 fought	conj
9	dead	dead	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 played	obj

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	fight	past	he	the dog				hard property	vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dog=Co-Agent
2	play	past	he not said here	dead			then		vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dead=Theme

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/568-pg2306-part4/t9/