How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of life, sentence 16
About 250 million years ago the continents were joined in one land called Pangaea, which is why the same fossils are found in Africa and South America; continents drift a few centimetres a year, about as fast as fingernails grow.
Who acts: continents, fingernails · What happens: join, call, be, find, drift, grow · To what, where: continents, one land, same fossils, Africa, few centimetres · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of life» 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 (continents, fingernails), 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 | About | about | ADV | _ | 3 million | advmod |
| 2 | 250 | 250 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 3 million | compound |
| 3 | million | million | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 4 years | nummod |
| 4 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 5 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 9 joined | advmod |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 continents | det |
| 7 | continents | continent | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 joined | nsubj:pass |
| 8 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 9 joined | aux:pass |
| 9 | joined | join | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 12 land | case |
| 11 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 12 land | nummod |
| 12 | land | land | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 joined | obl |
| 13 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 12 land | acl |
| 14 | Pangaea | Pangaea | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 called | xcomp |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 18 why | punct |
| 16 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 18 why | nsubj |
| 17 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 18 why | cop |
| 18 | why | why | ADV | PronType=Int | 23 found | advmod |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 fossils | det |
| 20 | same | same | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 fossils | amod |
| 21 | fossils | fossil | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 found | nsubj:pass |
| 22 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 23 found | aux:pass |
| 23 | found | find | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 9 joined | parataxis |
| 24 | in | in | ADP | _ | 25 Africa | case |
| 25 | Africa | Africa | PROPN | Number=Sing | 23 found | obl |
| 26 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 27 South | cc |
| 27 | South | South | PROPN | Number=Sing | 25 Africa | conj |
| 28 | America | America | PROPN | Number=Sing | 27 South | flat |
| 29 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 31 drift | punct |
| 30 | continents | continent | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 drift | nsubj |
| 31 | drift | drift | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 joined | parataxis |
| 32 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 34 centimetres | det |
| 33 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 34 centimetres | amod |
| 34 | centimetres | centimetre | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 drift | nmod |
| 35 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 36 year | det |
| 36 | year | year | NOUN | Number=Sing | 34 centimetres | nmod:unmarked |
| 37 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 40 fast | punct |
| 38 | about | about | ADV | _ | 40 fast | advmod |
| 39 | as | as | ADV | _ | 40 fast | advmod |
| 40 | fast | fast | ADV | Degree=Pos | 31 drift | advmod |
| 41 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 43 grow | mark |
| 42 | fingernails | fingernail | NOUN | Number=Plur | 43 grow | nsubj |
| 43 | grow | grow | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 40 fast | advcl |
| 44 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 joined | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- kept the draft
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | join | past · passive | the continents | one land | ago property | vn mix-22.1-2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient | |||
| 2 | call | participle | one land not said here | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | is | present | why property | tree rules | |||||
| 4 | find | present · passive | the same fossils | Africa and South | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic | ||||
| 5 | drift | present | continents | a few centimetres a year | fast property | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 6 | grow | present | fingernails | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=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:276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life.lesson:16.
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, R7-rel-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/276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life/16/