Fossils: how we know about life long ago, sentence 11
Coprolites are fossilised droppings that show what ancient animals ate; William Buckland recognised them in the 1820s, and Mary Anning noticed them inside ichthyosaur skeletons.
Who acts: Coprolites, fossilised droppings, ancient animals, William, Mary · What happens: fossilise, be, show, ate, recognise, notice · To what, where: fossilised droppings, Coprolites, 1820s, ichthyosaur skeletons · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (Coprolites, fossilised droppings, ancient animals, William), 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 | Coprolites | coprolite | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 fossilised | nsubj |
| 2 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 droppings | cop |
| 3 | fossilised | fossilise | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 4 droppings | amod |
| 4 | droppings | dropping | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 5 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 6 show | nsubj |
| 6 | show | show | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 droppings | acl:relcl |
| 7 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 10 ate | obj |
| 8 | ancient | ancient | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 animals | amod |
| 9 | animals | animal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 ate | nsubj |
| 10 | ate | ate | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 show | ccomp |
| 11 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 14 recognised | punct |
| 12 | William | William | PROPN | Number=Sing | 14 recognised | nsubj |
| 13 | Buckland | Buckland | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 William | flat |
| 14 | recognised | recognise | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 droppings | parataxis |
| 15 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 recognised | obj |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 18 1820s | case |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 1820s | det |
| 18 | 1820s | 1820 | NOUN | Number=Ptan NumForm=Combi NumType=Card | 14 recognised | obl |
| 19 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 23 noticed | punct |
| 20 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 23 noticed | cc |
| 21 | Mary | Mary | PROPN | Number=Sing | 23 noticed | nsubj |
| 22 | Anning | Anning | PROPN | Number=Sing | 21 Mary | flat |
| 23 | noticed | notice | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 recognised | conj |
| 24 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 23 noticed | obj |
| 25 | inside | inside | ADP | _ | 27 skeletons | case |
| 26 | ichthyosaur | ichthyosaur | NOUN | Number=Sing | 27 skeletons | compound |
| 27 | skeletons | skeleton | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 noticed | obl |
| 28 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 droppings | 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 | fossilise | participle | Coprolites | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | is a | present | fossilised droppings | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | show | present | fossilised droppings | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 4 | ate | past | ancient animals | tree rules | |||||
| 5 | recognise | past | William | Coprolites = coprolite | the 1820s | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus | |||
| 6 | notice | past | Mary | Coprolites = coprolite | ichthyosaur skeletons | vn see-30.1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |
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:11.
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): R6-punct-agree ×1, 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/11/