Fossils: how we know about life long ago, sentence 6

Most fossils form when a living thing is buried quickly, and minerals carried by water fill or replace the remains; only a tiny fraction of living things ever become fossils, because most remains are scattered, eaten or rot first, and soft animals like jellyfish, with no hard parts, almost never do.

Who acts: Most fossils, minerals, tiny fraction, soft animals · What happens: form, bury, carry, fill, replace, become · To what, where: living thing, minerals, remains, fossils, most remains

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, minerals, tiny fraction, soft animals), 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 Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	when	when	SCONJ	_	9 buried	mark
5	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 thing	det
6	living	living	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 thing	compound
7	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 buried	nsubj:pass
8	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 buried	aux:pass
9	buried	bury	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 form	advcl
10	quickly	quickly	ADV	_	9 buried	advmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 fill	punct
12	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 fill	cc
13	minerals	mineral	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 fill	nsubj
14	carried	carry	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	13 minerals	acl
15	by	by	ADP	_	16 water	case
16	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 carried	obl
17	fill	fill	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 form	conj
18	or	or	CCONJ	_	19 replace	cc
19	replace	replace	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 fill	conj
20	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	21 remains	det
21	remains	remains	NOUN	Number=Ptan	19 replace	obj
22	;	;	PUNCT	_	3 form	punct
23	only	only	ADV	_	26 fraction	advmod
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	26 fraction	det
25	tiny	tiny	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 fraction	amod
26	fraction	fraction	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 become	nsubj
27	of	of	ADP	_	29 things	case
28	living	living	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 things	amod
29	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	26 fraction	nmod
30	ever	ever	ADV	PronType=Ind	31 become	advmod
31	become	become	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 form	parataxis
32	fossils	fossil	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 become	xcomp
33	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 become	punct
34	because	because	SCONJ	_	38 scattered	mark
35	most	most	ADJ	Degree=Sup	36 remains	amod
36	remains	remains	NOUN	Number=Ptan	38 scattered	nsubj:pass
37	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	38 scattered	aux:pass
38	scattered	scatter	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	31 become	advcl
39	,	,	PUNCT	_	40 eaten	punct
40	eaten	eat	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	38 scattered	conj
41	or	or	CCONJ	_	42 rot	cc
42	rot	rot	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	40 eaten	conj
43	first	first	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	42 rot	advmod
44	,	,	PUNCT	_	58 do	punct
45	and	and	CCONJ	_	58 do	cc
46	soft	soft	ADJ	Degree=Pos	47 animals	amod
47	animals	animal	NOUN	Number=Plur	58 do	nsubj
48	like	like	ADP	_	49 jellyfish	case
49	jellyfish	jellyfish	NOUN	Number=Plur	47 animals	nmod
50	,	,	PUNCT	_	54 parts	punct
51	with	with	ADP	_	54 parts	case
52	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	54 parts	det
53	hard	hard	ADJ	Degree=Pos	54 parts	amod
54	parts	part	NOUN	Number=Plur	49 jellyfish	nmod
55	,	,	PUNCT	_	58 do	punct
56	almost	almost	ADV	_	58 do	advmod
57	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	58 do	advmod
58	do	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	38 scattered	conj
59	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 form	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	form	present	Most fossils				vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	bury	present · passive		a living thing		quickly property	vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme
3	carry	participle		minerals not said here		by water	vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
4	fill	present	minerals				vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
5	replace	present	minerals not said here	the remains			vn substitute-13.6.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme remains=Co-Theme
6	become	present	a tiny fraction of living things	fossils	ever		vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient
7	scatter	present · passive		most remains			vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: subject=Theme
8	eat	participle					vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
9	rot	infinitive				first property	vn entity_specific_cos-45.5 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
10	not do	present	soft animals like jellyfish with no hard parts			almost property	vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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:6.

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): R2-punct-next ×2, 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/74-fossils-life-long-ago/6/