Fossils: how a living thing turns to stone and how we dig it up, sentence 1
Picture a shell sinking into soft mud at the bottom of the sea; more mud piles on top, and over millions of years water full of dissolved minerals seeps through and slowly fills or replaces the shell with stone.
Who acts: you, shell, mud, water · What happens: picture, sink, pile, dissolve, seep, fill · To what, where: shell, soft mud, top, millions
This is a sentence of the lesson «Fossils: how a living thing turns to stone and how we dig it up» of the biology course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, shell, mud, water), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Picture | picture | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 shell | det |
| 3 | shell | shell | NOUN | Number=Sing | 1 Picture | obj |
| 4 | sinking | sink | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 3 shell | acl |
| 5 | into | into | ADP | _ | 7 mud | case |
| 6 | soft | soft | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 mud | amod |
| 7 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 sinking | obl |
| 8 | at | at | ADP | _ | 10 bottom | case |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 bottom | det |
| 10 | bottom | bottom | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 sinking | obl |
| 11 | of | of | ADP | _ | 13 sea | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 sea | det |
| 13 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 bottom | nmod |
| 14 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 17 piles | punct |
| 15 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 17 piles | amod |
| 16 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 piles | nsubj |
| 17 | piles | pile | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 1 Picture | parataxis |
| 18 | on | on | ADP | _ | 19 top | case |
| 19 | top | top | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 piles | obl |
| 20 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 31 seeps | punct |
| 21 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 31 seeps | cc |
| 22 | over | over | ADP | _ | 23 millions | case |
| 23 | millions | million | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 seeps | obl |
| 24 | of | of | ADP | _ | 25 years | case |
| 25 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 millions | nmod |
| 26 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 seeps | nsubj |
| 27 | full | full | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 water | amod |
| 28 | of | of | ADP | _ | 30 minerals | case |
| 29 | dissolved | dissolve | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 30 minerals | amod |
| 30 | minerals | mineral | NOUN | Number=Plur | 27 full | obl |
| 31 | seeps | seep | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 piles | conj |
| 32 | through | through | ADV | _ | 31 seeps | advmod |
| 33 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 35 fills | cc |
| 34 | slowly | slowly | ADV | _ | 35 fills | advmod |
| 35 | fills | fill | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 31 seeps | conj |
| 36 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 37 replaces | cc |
| 37 | replaces | replace | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 35 fills | conj |
| 38 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 39 shell | det |
| 39 | shell | shell | NOUN | Number=Sing | 37 replaces | obj |
| 40 | with | with | ADP | _ | 41 stone | case |
| 41 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 37 replaces | obl |
| 42 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 1 Picture | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | picture | imperative | you not said here | a shell | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent shell=Theme | ||||
| 2 | sink | gerund | a shell not said here | soft mud | at the bottom of the sea | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | |||
| 3 | pile | present | mud | top | vn spray-9.7-1-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme on top=Destination | ||||
| 4 | dissolve | participle | vn break-45.1 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | ||||||
| 5 | seep | present | water | millions of years | through property | vn substance_emission-43.4-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over million=Location | |||
| 6 | fill | present | water not said here | slowly property | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | ||||
| 7 | replace | present | water not said here | the shell | with stone | vn substitute-13.6.2-1 «NP V NP PP.co-theme»: agent=Theme shell=Location with stone=Co-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.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, mova-school-agreed-en.conllu) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence school:biology:275-fossils-how-a-living-thing-turns-to-stone-and-how-we-dig-it-up.lesson:1.
The tree: Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1. The frames are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (prag) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.
See the release 0.4.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/275-fossils-how-a-living-thing-turns-to-stone-and-how-we-dig-it-up/1/