Exam question 1 · Fronted adverbials

Identify the fronted adverbial in the sentence «At noon, the omnibus departed».

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 2 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you, omnibus · What happens: identify, front, depart · To what, where: fronted adverbial, sentence · Speech: someone speaks here

This is exam question 1 of lesson 29 «Fronted adverbials» of the English 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	Identify	identify	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 adverbial	det
3	fronted	front	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	4 adverbial	amod
4	adverbial	adverbial	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Identify	obj
5	in	in	ADP	_	7 sentence	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 sentence	det
7	sentence	sentence	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Identify	obl
8	«	«	PUNCT	_	14 departed	punct
9	At	at	ADP	_	10 noon	case
10	noon	noon	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 departed	obl
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 noon	punct
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 omnibus	det
13	omnibus	omnibus	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 departed	nsubj
14	departed	depart	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 Identify	parataxis
15	»	»	PUNCT	_	14 departed	punct
16	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Identify	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	roles by
1	identify	imperative	you not said here	the fronted adverbial	the sentence		vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP to be ADJ»: agent=Agent adverbial=Theme clause=Attribute
2	front	participle					tree rules
3	depart in a quote	past	the omnibus			noon	vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

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 omnibus

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

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

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

Option 2 · ✓ the right answer

At noon

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	At	at	ADP	_	2 noon	case
2	noon	noon	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 3

the omnibus departed

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 omnibus	det
2	omnibus	omnibus	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
3	departed	depart	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	2 omnibus	acl

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	depart	participle		the omnibus not said here					vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

Option 4

departed

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	departed	depart	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	depart	participle							vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=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/english/29-fronted-adverbials/e1/