Test 9 · Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing

If you found wedge-shaped marks on an old piece of clay, what are they probably?

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you, marks · What happens: find, shape, be · To what, where: shaped marks, old piece

This is test 9 of lesson 3 «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing» 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	If	if	SCONJ	_	3 found	mark
2	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	3 found	nsubj
3	found	find	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	wedge	wedge	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 shaped	compound
5	-	-	PUNCT	_	4 wedge	punct
6	shaped	shape	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	7 marks	amod
7	marks	mark	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 found	obj
8	on	on	ADP	_	11 piece	case
9	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 piece	det
10	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 piece	amod
11	piece	piece	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 found	obl
12	of	of	ADP	_	13 clay	case
13	clay	clay	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 piece	nmod
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 what	punct
15	what	what	PRON	PronType=Rel	11 piece	conj
16	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	18 probably	cop
17	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 probably	nsubj
18	probably	probably	ADV	_	15 what	acl:relcl
19	?	?	PUNCT	_	3 found	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	find	past	you	shaped marks	a old piece of clay		vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mark=Topic
2	shape	participle					vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset
3	is	present	marks = mark			probably property	tree rules

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

Bird footprints by chance

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Bird	bird	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 footprints	compound
2	footprints	footprint	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
3	by	by	ADP	_	4 chance	case
4	chance	chance	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 footprints	nmod

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

Option 2

Hieroglyphs from Egypt

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Hieroglyphs	hieroglyph	NOUN	Number=Plur	root	root
2	from	from	ADP	_	3 Egypt	case
3	Egypt	Egypt	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 Hieroglyphs	nmod

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

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

Cuneiform writing

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Cuneiform	cuneiform	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 writing	compound
2	writing	writing	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 4

Chinese characters

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 characters	amod
2	characters	character	NOUN	Number=Plur	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/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/t9/