Test 5 · Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens and Sparta

Why did Sparta need the helots?

Mova's choice: option 2 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: Sparta · What happens: need · To what, where: helots

This is test 5 of lesson 11 «Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens and Sparta» of the history 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	Why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	4 need	advmod
2	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 need	aux
3	Sparta	Sparta	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 need	nsubj
4	need	need	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 helots	det
6	helots	helot	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 need	obj
7	?	?	PUNCT	_	4 need	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	need	past · do-support	Sparta	the helots					vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot helot=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

The helots were their teachers

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 helots	det
2	helots	helot	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 teachers	nsubj
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 teachers	cop
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 teachers	nmod:poss
5	teachers	teacher	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is a	past	the helots	helots's teachers					tree rules

Option 2 · ← Mova's choice

Sparta had no land at all to farm

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Sparta	Sparta	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 had	nsubj
2	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	4 land	det
4	land	land	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 had	obj
5	at	at	ADP	_	6 all	case
6	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	2 had	obl
7	to	to	PART	_	8 farm	mark
8	farm	farm	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 had	advcl

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	have	past	Sparta	no land		all			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent land=Patient
2	farm	to-infinitive	Sparta not said here						vn rear-26.2.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

The Spartans trained as soldiers and did not farm

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 Spartans	det
2	Spartans	Spartan	PROPN	Number=Plur	3 trained	nsubj
3	trained	train	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	as	as	ADP	_	5 soldiers	case
5	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 trained	obl
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 did	cc
7	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 trained	conj
8	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	9 farm	advmod
9	farm	farm	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 did	obj

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	train	past	the Spartans					as soldiers	vn hire-13.5.3 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Agent as soldier=Attribute
2	do	past	the Spartans not said here	farm					vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent farm=Eventuality

Option 4

The helots were the kings and rulers of Sparta

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 helots	det
2	helots	helot	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 kings	nsubj
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 kings	cop
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 kings	det
5	kings	king	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 rulers	cc
7	rulers	ruler	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 kings	conj
8	of	of	ADP	_	9 Sparta	case
9	Sparta	Sparta	PROPN	Number=Sing	7 rulers	nmod

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is a	past	the helots	the kings and rulers of Sparta					tree rules

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/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/t5/