Exam question 4 · Silent letters and the mystery of -ough

Ascertain which of the following words rhymes with "cow".

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 3 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you · What happens: ascertain, follow, rhyme

This is exam question 4 of lesson 13 «Silent letters and the mystery of -ough» of the language 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	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	7 rhymes	nsubj
3	of	of	ADP	_	6 words	case
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 words	det
5	following	follow	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	6 words	amod
6	words	word	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 which	nmod
7	rhymes	rhyme	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	1 Ascertain	acl:relcl
8	with	with	ADP	_	10 cow	case
9	"	"	PUNCT	_	10 cow	punct
10	cow	cow	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 rhymes	obl
11	"	"	PUNCT	_	10 cow	punct
12	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Ascertain	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	other	roles by
1	ascertain	imperative	you not said here		vn discover-84 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent
2	follow	gerund			vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	rhyme	present		with cow	vn amalgamate-22.2-2-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Patient with cow=Co-Patient

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

cough

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	cough	cough	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 2

tough

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	tough	tough	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

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

Option 3 · ✓ the right answer

bough

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	bough	bough	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root

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

Option 4

though

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	though	though	ADV	_	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/language/13-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough/e4/