Exam question 4 · Active and passive voice, modal verbs

Select the modal verb expressing the lowest degree of certainty.

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 2 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you, modal verb · What happens: select, express · To what, where: modal verb, lowest degree

This is exam question 4 of lesson 32 «Active and passive voice, modal verbs» 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	Select	select	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 verb	det
3	modal	modal	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 verb	amod
4	verb	verb	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 Select	obj
5	expressing	express	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	4 verb	acl
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 degree	det
7	lowest	low	ADJ	Degree=Sup	8 degree	amod
8	degree	degree	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 expressing	obj
9	of	of	ADP	_	10 certainty	case
10	certainty	certainty	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 degree	nmod
11	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Select	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	select	imperative	you not said here	the modal verb					vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent verb=Theme
2	express	gerund	the modal verb not said here	the lowest degree of certainty					vn reflexive_appearance-48.1.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent degree=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

shall

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	shall	shall	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	root	root

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

Option 2 · ✓ the right answer

might

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	root	root

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

Option 3

will

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	will	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	root	root

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

Option 4

must

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	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/english/32-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs/e4/