Fossils: how a living thing turns to stone and how we dig it up, sentence 17
Some historians think ancient people who found Protoceratops skulls in the Gobi Desert imagined griffins, and that mammoth skulls with one big nose hole may have inspired stories of one-eyed giants; this is an idea, not something proven.
Who acts: historians, ancient people, mammoth skulls, this · What happens: think, find, imagine, inspire, be, prove · To what, where: Protoceratops skulls, Gobi Desert, griffins, stories, idea · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (historians, ancient people, mammoth skulls, this), 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 | Some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 2 historians | det |
| 2 | historians | historian | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 think | nsubj |
| 3 | think | think | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | ancient | ancient | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 people | amod |
| 5 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 imagined | ccomp |
| 6 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 7 found | nsubj |
| 7 | found | find | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 people | acl:relcl |
| 8 | Protoceratops | protoceratops | PROPN | Number=Sing | 9 skulls | compound |
| 9 | skulls | skull | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 found | obj |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 Desert | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 Desert | det |
| 12 | Gobi | Gobi | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 Desert | compound |
| 13 | Desert | desert | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 found | obl |
| 14 | imagined | imagine | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 think | ccomp |
| 15 | griffins | griffin | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 imagined | obj |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 28 inspired | punct |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 28 inspired | cc |
| 18 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 28 inspired | mark |
| 19 | mammoth | mammoth | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 20 skulls | amod |
| 20 | skulls | skull | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 inspired | nsubj |
| 21 | with | with | ADP | _ | 25 hole | case |
| 22 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 25 hole | nummod |
| 23 | big | big | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 25 hole | amod |
| 24 | nose | nose | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 hole | compound |
| 25 | hole | hole | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 skulls | nmod |
| 26 | may | may | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 28 inspired | aux |
| 27 | have | have | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 28 inspired | aux |
| 28 | inspired | inspire | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 14 imagined | conj |
| 29 | stories | story | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 inspired | obj |
| 30 | of | of | ADP | _ | 34 giants | case |
| 31 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 34 giants | nummod |
| 32 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 34 giants | punct |
| 33 | eyed | eye | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 34 giants | amod |
| 34 | giants | giant | NOUN | Number=Plur | 29 stories | nmod |
| 35 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 39 idea | punct |
| 36 | this | this | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 39 idea | nsubj |
| 37 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 39 idea | cop |
| 38 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 39 idea | det |
| 39 | idea | idea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 think | parataxis |
| 40 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 42 something | punct |
| 41 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 42 something | advmod |
| 42 | something | something | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 39 idea | conj |
| 43 | proven | prove | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 42 something | acl |
| 44 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 think | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | think speech: other | present | some historians | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | find | past | ancient people | Protoceratops skulls | the Gobi Desert | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skull=Topic | |||
| 3 | imagine | past | griffins | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot griffin=Theme | |||||
| 4 | inspire | may · perfect | mammoth skulls with one big nose hole | stories of one eyed giants | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus story=Experiencer | ||||
| 5 | is a | present | this | a idea | tree rules | ||||
| 6 | prove | participle | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S_INF»: agent=Agent |
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:17.
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): R2-punct-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, R8-pos-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/17/