The four tones: same sound, different meaning, sentence 9

mà («MAH!» falling sharply) is the fourth tone and means to scold; Chinese speakers are not angry, Mandarin just has many falling words.

Who acts: mà, Chinese speakers, Mandarin · What happens: fall, be, mean, scold, not be, have · To what, where: fourth tone, many falling words

This is a sentence of the lesson «The four tones: same sound, different meaning» of the chinese street 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 (mà, Chinese speakers, Mandarin), 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	mà	mà	PROPN	Number=Sing	13 tone	nsubj
2	(	(	PUNCT	_	4 MAH	punct
3	«	«	PUNCT	_	4 MAH	punct
4	MAH	MAH	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 mà	appos
5	!	!	PUNCT	_	4 MAH	punct
6	»	»	PUNCT	_	4 MAH	punct
7	falling	fall	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	1 mà	acl:relcl
8	sharply	sharply	ADV	_	7 falling	advmod
9	)	)	PUNCT	_	8 sharply	punct
10	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 tone	cop
11	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 tone	det
12	fourth	fourth	ADJ	Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	13 tone	amod
13	tone	tone	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 means	cc
15	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 tone	conj
16	to	to	PART	_	17 scold	mark
17	scold	scold	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 means	xcomp
18	;	;	PUNCT	_	23 angry	punct
19	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 speakers	amod
20	speakers	speaker	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 angry	nsubj
21	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	23 angry	cop
22	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	23 angry	advmod
23	angry	angry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 tone	parataxis
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 Mandarin	punct
25	Mandarin	Mandarin	PROPN	Number=Sing	27 has	nsubj
26	just	just	ADV	_	27 has	advmod
27	has	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 tone	parataxis
28	many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	30 words	amod
29	falling	fall	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	30 words	amod
30	words	word	NOUN	Number=Plur	27 has	obj
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	13 tone	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	fall	gerund	mà not said here		sharply property	vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	is a	present	mà	the fourth tone		tree rules
3	mean	present	mà not said here			vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	scold not said to happen	to-infinitive	mà not said here			vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
5	not is	present	Chinese speakers		angry property	tree rules
6	have	present	Mandarin	many falling words		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent word=Patient
7	fall	gerund				vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=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:chinese-street:002-the-four-tones.lesson:9.

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 ×2, R7-rel-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/chinese-street/2-the-four-tones/9/