Fossils: how we know about life long ago, sentence 1
Most fossils form when an animal is buried fast in mud; over ages the mud becomes rock and minerals slowly replace the bone or shell, leaving a stone copy like the spiral ammonite you might find on the beach at Lyme Regis.
Who acts: Most fossils, mud, minerals, you · What happens: form, bury, become, replace, leave, find · To what, where: animal, mud, ages, bone, stone copy, spiral ammonite
This is a sentence of the lesson «Fossils: how we know about life long ago» 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 (Most fossils, mud, minerals, you), 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 | Most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 2 fossils | amod |
| 2 | fossils | fossil | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 form | nsubj |
| 3 | form | form | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 8 buried | advmod |
| 5 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 animal | det |
| 6 | animal | animal | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 buried | nsubj:pass |
| 7 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 buried | aux:pass |
| 8 | buried | bury | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 form | advcl |
| 9 | fast | fast | ADV | Degree=Pos | 8 buried | advmod |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 11 mud | case |
| 11 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 buried | obl |
| 12 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 13 over | punct |
| 13 | over | over | ADV | _ | 8 buried | advmod |
| 14 | ages | ages | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 becomes | obl:unmarked |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 mud | det |
| 16 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 becomes | nsubj |
| 17 | becomes | become | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 buried | advcl |
| 18 | rock | rock | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 becomes | xcomp |
| 19 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 22 replace | cc |
| 20 | minerals | mineral | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 replace | nsubj |
| 21 | slowly | slowly | ADV | _ | 22 replace | advmod |
| 22 | replace | replace | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 buried | conj |
| 23 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 24 bone | det |
| 24 | bone | bone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 replace | obj |
| 25 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 26 shell | cc |
| 26 | shell | shell | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 bone | conj |
| 27 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 28 leaving | punct |
| 28 | leaving | leave | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 22 replace | advcl |
| 29 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 31 copy | det |
| 30 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 copy | compound |
| 31 | copy | copy | NOUN | Number=Sing | 28 leaving | obj |
| 32 | like | like | ADP | _ | 35 ammonite | case |
| 33 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 35 ammonite | det |
| 34 | spiral | spiral | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 35 ammonite | amod |
| 35 | ammonite | ammonite | NOUN | Number=Sing | 28 leaving | obl |
| 36 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 38 find | nsubj |
| 37 | might | might | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 38 find | aux |
| 38 | find | find | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 35 ammonite | acl:relcl |
| 39 | on | on | ADP | _ | 41 beach | case |
| 40 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 41 beach | det |
| 41 | beach | beach | NOUN | Number=Sing | 38 find | obl |
| 42 | at | at | ADP | _ | 43 Lyme | case |
| 43 | Lyme | Lyme | PROPN | Number=Sing | 41 beach | nmod |
| 44 | Regis | Regis | PROPN | Number=Sing | 43 Lyme | flat |
| 45 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 form | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | form | present | Most fossils | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 2 | bury | present · passive | a animal | mud | fast, over property | vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme in mud=Destination | |||
| 3 | become | present | the mud | ages | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient | ||||
| 4 | replace | present | minerals | the bone or shell | slowly property | vn substitute-13.6.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme bone=Co-Theme | |||
| 5 | leave | gerund | minerals not said here | a stone copy | like the spiral ammonite | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent copy=Theme | |||
| 6 | find | might | you | the spiral ammonite not said here | the beach at Lyme | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ammonite=Topic |
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:074-fossils-life-long-ago.lesson:1.
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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2, 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/74-fossils-life-long-ago/1/