Fossils: how a living thing turns to stone and how we dig it up, sentence 4
Scientists who study fossils are called palaeontologists, and they dig very slowly with brushes and small picks, because a careless hit can destroy a find that waited millions of years.
Who acts: Scientists, careless hit, find · What happens: study, call, dig, destroy, wait · To what, where: fossils, Scientists, find, millions · 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 (Scientists, careless hit, find), 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 | Scientists | scientist | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 called | nsubj |
| 2 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 3 study | nsubj |
| 3 | study | study | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 1 Scientists | acl:relcl |
| 4 | fossils | fossil | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 study | obj |
| 5 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 called | aux:pass |
| 6 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 7 | palaeontologists | palaeontologist | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 called | xcomp |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 dig | punct |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 dig | cc |
| 10 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 dig | nsubj |
| 11 | dig | dig | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 called | conj |
| 12 | very | very | ADV | _ | 13 slowly | advmod |
| 13 | slowly | slowly | ADV | _ | 11 dig | advmod |
| 14 | with | with | ADP | _ | 15 brushes | case |
| 15 | brushes | brush | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 dig | obl |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 18 picks | cc |
| 17 | small | small | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 18 picks | amod |
| 18 | picks | pick | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 brushes | conj |
| 19 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 25 destroy | punct |
| 20 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 25 destroy | mark |
| 21 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 23 hit | det |
| 22 | careless | careless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 23 hit | amod |
| 23 | hit | hit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 destroy | nsubj |
| 24 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 25 destroy | aux |
| 25 | destroy | destroy | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 11 dig | advcl |
| 26 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 27 find | det |
| 27 | find | find | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 destroy | obj |
| 28 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 29 waited | nsubj |
| 29 | waited | wait | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 27 find | acl:relcl |
| 30 | millions | million | NOUN | Number=Plur | 29 waited | obj |
| 31 | of | of | ADP | _ | 32 years | case |
| 32 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 30 millions | nmod |
| 33 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 called | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | study | present | Scientists | fossils | vn learn-14-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fossil=Topic | ||||
| 2 | call | present · passive | Scientists | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient | |||||
| 3 | dig | present | Scientists = scientist | with brushes and small picks; slowly property | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme PP.instrument»: agent=Agent with brush=Instrument | ||||
| 4 | destroy | can | a careless hit | a find | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent find=Patient | ||||
| 5 | wait | past | a find | millions of years | 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.
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:4.
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): no change. 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/4/