Fossils: how a living thing turns to stone and how we dig it up, sentence 9

Far fewer than one in a million animals becomes a fossil, because most bodies are eaten, rot or are broken up; only a quick burial without air gives a chance.

Who acts: one, quick burial · What happens: become, eat, rot, break up, give · To what, where: fossil, most bodies, chance

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 (one, quick burial), 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	Far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	2 fewer	advmod
2	fewer	few	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	4 one	advmod
3	than	than	ADP	_	2 fewer	fixed
4	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	9 becomes	nsubj
5	in	in	ADP	_	7 million	case
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 million	det
7	million	million	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	8 animals	nummod
8	animals	animal	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 one	nmod
9	becomes	become	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 fossil	det
11	fossil	fossil	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 becomes	xcomp
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 eaten	punct
13	because	because	SCONJ	_	17 eaten	mark
14	most	most	ADJ	Degree=Sup	15 bodies	amod
15	bodies	body	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 eaten	nsubj:pass
16	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 eaten	aux:pass
17	eaten	eat	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	9 becomes	advcl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 rot	punct
19	rot	rot	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 eaten	conj
20	or	or	CCONJ	_	22 broken	cc
21	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	22 broken	aux:pass
22	broken	break	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	17 eaten	conj
23	up	up	ADP	_	22 broken	compound:prt
24	;	;	PUNCT	_	9 becomes	punct
25	only	only	ADV	_	28 burial	advmod
26	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	28 burial	det
27	quick	quick	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 burial	amod
28	burial	burial	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 gives	nsubj
29	without	without	ADP	_	30 air	case
30	air	air	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 burial	nmod
31	gives	give	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 becomes	parataxis
32	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	33 chance	det
33	chance	chance	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 gives	obj
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	9 becomes	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: kept the draft

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	become	present	one million animals	a fossil	vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient
2	eat	present · passive		most bodies	vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
3	rot	infinitive			vn entity_specific_cos-45.5 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
4	break up	present · passive			vn break-45.1 «NP.patient V»
5	give	present	a quick burial without air	a chance	vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent chance=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:9.

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. 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/9/