Exam question 4 · Alice's word games: puns, parodies and nonsense

Ascertain the expression of which «Curiouser and curiouser» constitutes an ungrammatical rendering.

Mova's choice: option 1 · The right answer: option 2 · wrong ✗ · Who acts: you, expression · What happens: ascertain, constitute · To what, where: ungrammatical rendering

This is exam question 4 of lesson 41 «Alice's word games: puns, parodies and nonsense» 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	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	3 expression	det
3	expression	expression	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 constitutes	nsubj
4	of	of	ADP	_	5 which	case
5	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	7 Curiouser	nsubj
6	«	«	PUNCT	_	7 Curiouser	punct
7	Curiouser	curious	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	3 expression	acl:relcl
8	and	and	CCONJ	_	9 curiouser	cc
9	curiouser	curious	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	7 Curiouser	conj
10	»	»	PUNCT	_	7 Curiouser	punct
11	constitutes	constitute	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	1 Ascertain	acl:relcl
12	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 rendering	det
13	ungrammatical	ungrammatical	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 rendering	amod
14	rendering	rendering	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 constitutes	obj
15	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Ascertain	punct

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	ascertain	imperative	you not said here						vn discover-84 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent
2	constitute	present	the expression	a ungrammatical rendering					vn comprise-107.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme rendering=Pivot

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

Most curious of all

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Most	most	ADJ	Degree=Sup	2 curious	amod
2	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
3	of	of	ADP	_	4 all	case
4	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	2 curious	obl

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

Option 2 · ✓ the right answer

More and more curious

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	More	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	4 curious	advmod
2	and	and	CCONJ	_	3 more	cc
3	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	1 More	conj
4	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

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

Option 3

Less and less curious

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Less	less	ADV	Degree=Cmp	4 curious	advmod
2	and	and	CCONJ	_	3 less	cc
3	less	less	ADV	Degree=Cmp	1 Less	conj
4	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root

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

Option 4

Curious and more curious still

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
2	and	and	CCONJ	_	4 curious	cc
3	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	4 curious	advmod
4	curious	curious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	1 Curious	conj
5	still	still	ADV	_	1 Curious	advmod

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/41-alice-s-word-games-puns-parodies-and-nonsense/e4/