Just So Stories, How the First Letter Was Written, part 3: «a great invention» and the road on Merrow Down, sentence 26
Real life: the first true writing grew from pictures and counting marks used by traders and temple workers in Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago, to keep records of grain, sheep and beer.
Who acts: first true writing · What happens: grow, count, use, keep, record · To what, where: Mesopotamia, marks, records, grain
This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, How the First Letter Was Written, part 3: «a great invention» and the road on Merrow Down» of the books 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 (first true writing), 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 | Real | real | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 2 life | amod |
| 2 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 writing | appos |
| 3 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 2 life | punct |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 writing | det |
| 5 | first | first | ADJ | Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 7 writing | amod |
| 6 | true | true | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 writing | amod |
| 7 | writing | writing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 grew | nsubj |
| 8 | grew | grow | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | from | from | ADP | _ | 10 pictures | case |
| 10 | pictures | picture | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 grew | obl |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 counting | cc |
| 12 | counting | count | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 10 pictures | conj |
| 13 | marks | mark | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 pictures | conj |
| 14 | used | use | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 13 marks | acl |
| 15 | by | by | ADP | _ | 16 traders | case |
| 16 | traders | trader | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 used | obl:agent |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 workers | cc |
| 18 | temple | temple | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 workers | compound |
| 19 | workers | worker | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 traders | conj |
| 20 | in | in | ADP | _ | 21 Mesopotamia | case |
| 21 | Mesopotamia | Mesopotamia | PROPN | Number=Sing | 12 counting | obl |
| 22 | about | about | ADV | _ | 23 5,000 | advmod |
| 23 | 5,000 | 5000 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 24 years | nummod |
| 24 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 25 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 12 counting | advmod |
| 26 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 28 keep | punct |
| 27 | to | to | PART | _ | 28 keep | mark |
| 28 | keep | keep | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 12 counting | conj |
| 29 | records | record | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 keep | obj |
| 30 | of | of | ADP | _ | 31 grain | case |
| 31 | grain | grain | NOUN | Number=Sing | 29 records | nmod |
| 32 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 33 sheep | punct |
| 33 | sheep | sheep | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 grain | conj |
| 34 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 35 beer | cc |
| 35 | beer | beer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 33 sheep | conj |
| 36 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 life | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | grow | past | the first true writing | from pictures and marks | vn grow-26.2.1 «NP.product V PP.patient»: agent=Product from picture=Patient | ||||
| 2 | count | gerund | the first true writing not said here | Mesopotamia | ago property | vn matter-91 «NP V»: agent=Stimulus | |||
| 3 | use | participle | marks not said here | vn eat-39.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | keep | to-infinitive | the first true writing not said here | records of grain and sheep and beer | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent record=Theme | ||||
| 5 | record | grain and sheep and beer | nom record «communication transitive»: of=patient |
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:books:086-justso-first-letter-3-a-great-invention.lesson:26.
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. 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.
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