Exam question 4 · Red envelopes and New Year wishes

Ascertain the zodiac animal of the year commencing at the Chinese New Year of 2026.

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 4 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you, zodiac animal · What happens: ascertain, commence · To what, where: zodiac animal

This is exam question 4 of lesson 26 «Red envelopes and New Year wishes» of the Chinese street 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	Ascertain	ascertain	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 animal	det
3	zodiac	zodiac	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 animal	compound
4	animal	animal	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Ascertain	obj
5	of	of	ADP	_	7 year	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 year	det
7	year	year	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 animal	nmod
8	commencing	commence	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	4 animal	acl
9	at	at	ADP	_	13 Year	case
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 Year	det
11	Chinese	Chinese	PROPN	Number=Sing	13 Year	compound
12	New	New	PROPN	Number=Sing	13 Year	compound
13	Year	Year	PROPN	Number=Sing	8 commencing	obl
14	of	of	ADP	_	15 2026	case
15	2026	2026	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	13 Year	nmod
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Ascertain	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	ascertain	imperative	you not said here	the zodiac animal of the year					vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent animal=Topic
2	commence	gerund	the zodiac animal of the year not said here				at the Chinese New Year of 2026		vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality

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

The Rat

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 Rat	det
2	Rat	Rat	PROPN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 2

The Dragon

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 Dragon	det
2	Dragon	Dragon	PROPN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 3

The Goat

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 Goat	det
2	Goat	Goat	PROPN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 4 · ✓ the right answer

The Horse

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	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/chinese-street/26-red-envelopes-and-new-year-wishes/e4/