Exam question 4 · Andersen's Fairy Tales, Soup from a Sausage Skewer, part 1…

What did the forest mice declare regarding the preparation of the soup, as reported by the first traveller?

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: forest mice · What happens: do, declare, regard, report, prepare · To what, where: soup

This is exam question 4 of lesson 989 «Andersen's Fairy Tales, Soup from a Sausage Skewer, part 1: four mice set out to learn how to make soup, and one of them meets elves at a Maypole dance» 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	2 did	nsubj
2	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 mice	det
4	forest	forest	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 mice	compound
5	mice	mouse	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 declare	nsubj
6	declare	declare	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 did	parataxis
7	regarding	regard	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	9 preparation	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 preparation	det
9	preparation	preparation	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 declare	obl
10	of	of	ADP	_	12 soup	case
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	12 soup	det
12	soup	soup	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 preparation	nmod
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 reported	punct
14	as	as	SCONJ	_	15 reported	mark
15	reported	report	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 did	conj
16	by	by	ADP	_	19 traveller	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	19 traveller	det
18	first	first	ADJ	Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	19 traveller	amod
19	traveller	traveller	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 reported	obl
20	?	?	PUNCT	_	2 did	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	do	past				vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	declare speech: other	present	the forest mice		regard the preparation of the soup	vn declare-29.4-1-1-1 «NP V what S_INF»: agent=Agent
3	regard	gerund				vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
4	report	participle			by the first traveller	vn characterize-29.2-1-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
5	prepare			the soup		nom preparation «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 · ← Mova's choice

that no mouse could solve it

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	that	that	SCONJ	_	5 solve	mark
2	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	3 mouse	det
3	mouse	mouse	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 solve	nsubj
4	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 solve	aux
5	solve	solve	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
6	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 solve	obj

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	solve	could	no mouse	it					vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic

Option 2

that the soup was far too hard

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	that	that	SCONJ	_	7 hard	mark
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 soup	det
3	soup	soup	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 hard	nsubj
4	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 hard	cop
5	far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	7 hard	advmod
6	too	too	ADV	_	7 hard	advmod
7	hard	hard	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	the soup					far, hard property	tree rules

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

that the problem would never be solved

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	that	that	SCONJ	_	7 solved	mark
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 problem	det
3	problem	problem	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 solved	nsubj:pass
4	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	7 solved	aux
5	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	7 solved	advmod
6	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	7 solved	aux:pass
7	solved	solve	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	not solve	would · passive		the problem					vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic

Option 4

nothing at all

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	root	root
2	at	at	ADP	_	3 all	case
3	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	1 nothing	nmod

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/989-pg27200-part200/e4/