Horses, cattle, camels and chickens: how people tamed animals, sentence 16

Silk comes from the cocoons of a moth caterpillar tamed in China about 5,000 years ago; the tame moths can no longer fly, and silk cloth was so precious and sold for so much along trade routes that China kept its secret for centuries.

Who acts: Silk, tame moths, silk cloth, China · What happens: come, tame, fly, be, sell, keep · To what, where: cocoons, moth caterpillar, China, much, secret

This is a sentence of the lesson «Horses, cattle, camels and chickens: how people tamed animals» 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 (Silk, tame moths, silk cloth, China), 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	Silk	silk	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 comes	nsubj
2	comes	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	from	from	ADP	_	5 cocoons	case
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 cocoons	det
5	cocoons	cocoon	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 comes	obl
6	of	of	ADP	_	9 caterpillar	case
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 caterpillar	det
8	moth	moth	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 caterpillar	compound
9	caterpillar	caterpillar	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 cocoons	nmod
10	tamed	tame	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	9 caterpillar	acl
11	in	in	ADP	_	12 China	case
12	China	China	PROPN	Number=Sing	10 tamed	obl
13	about	about	ADV	_	14 5,000	advmod
14	5,000	5000	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	15 years	nummod
15	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 ago	obl:unmarked
16	ago	ago	ADV	_	10 tamed	advmod
17	;	;	PUNCT	_	24 fly	punct
18	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 moths	det
19	tame	tame	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 moths	amod
20	moths	moth	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 fly	nsubj
21	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	24 fly	aux
22	no	no	ADV	_	23 longer	advmod
23	longer	long	ADV	Degree=Cmp	24 fly	advmod
24	fly	fly	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 comes	conj
25	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 fly	punct
26	and	and	CCONJ	_	31 precious	cc
27	silk	silk	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 cloth	compound
28	cloth	cloth	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 precious	nsubj
29	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 precious	cop
30	so	so	ADV	_	31 precious	advmod
31	precious	precious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 fly	conj
32	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 sold	cc
33	sold	sell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 precious	conj
34	for	for	ADP	_	39 routes	case
35	so	so	ADV	_	36 much	advmod
36	much	much	ADJ	Degree=Pos	33 sold	obl
37	along	along	ADP	_	39 routes	case
38	trade	trade	NOUN	Number=Sing	39 routes	compound
39	routes	route	NOUN	Number=Plur	33 sold	obl
40	that	that	SCONJ	_	42 kept	mark
41	China	China	PROPN	Number=Sing	42 kept	nsubj
42	kept	keep	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	39 routes	acl:relcl
43	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	44 secret	nmod:poss
44	secret	secret	NOUN	Number=Sing	42 kept	obj
45	for	for	ADP	_	46 centuries	case
46	centuries	century	NOUN	Number=Plur	42 kept	obl
47	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 comes	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	come	present	Silk		the cocoons of a moth caterpillar			vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme from cocoon=Initial_Location
2	tame	participle		a moth caterpillar not said here	China		ago property	vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
3	fly	can	the tame moths				long property	vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
4	is	past	silk cloth				precious property	tree rules
5	sell	past	silk cloth not said here	much			for trade routes	vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.asset»: agent=Agent for route=Asset
6	keep	past	China	cloth's secret		century		vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent secret=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:293-horses-cattle-camels-and-chickens-how-people-tamed-animals.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): R1-cc-next ×2, R2-punct-next ×1, R5-strong ×3, 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/293-horses-cattle-camels-and-chickens-how-people-tamed-animals/16/