Commas: lists, clauses and clarity, sentence 6

A comma before the final "and" in a list is called the Oxford comma; most British schools leave it out, but it is not wrong and it can stop confusion.

Who acts: most British schools, comma · What happens: call, leave out, not be, stop · To what, where: comma, list, confusion · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Commas: lists, clauses and clarity» of the english 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 British schools, comma), 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	A	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	2 comma	det
2	comma	comma	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 called	nsubj:pass
3	before	before	ADP	_	5 final	case
4	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 final	det
5	final	final	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 comma	nmod
6	"	"	PUNCT	_	13 called	punct
7	and	and	CCONJ	_	13 called	cc
8	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 and	punct
9	in	in	ADP	_	11 list	case
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 list	det
11	list	list	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 called	obl
12	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 called	aux:pass
13	called	call	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 comma	det
15	Oxford	Oxford	PROPN	Number=Sing	16 comma	compound
16	comma	comma	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 called	xcomp
17	;	;	PUNCT	_	13 called	punct
18	most	most	ADJ	Degree=Sup	20 schools	amod
19	British	British	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 schools	amod
20	schools	school	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 leave	nsubj
21	leave	leave	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 called	parataxis
22	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 leave	obj
23	out	out	ADP	_	21 leave	compound:prt
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 wrong	punct
25	but	but	CCONJ	_	29 wrong	cc
26	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 wrong	nsubj
27	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	29 wrong	cop
28	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	29 wrong	advmod
29	wrong	wrong	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 leave	conj
30	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 stop	cc
31	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	33 stop	nsubj
32	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	33 stop	aux
33	stop	stop	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	29 wrong	conj
34	confusion	confusion	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 stop	obj
35	.	.	PUNCT	_	13 called	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	call speech: assert	present · passive		a comma before the final	a list		vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient
2	leave out	present	most British schools	comma			vn neglect-75.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme
3	not is	present	comma			wrong property	tree rules
4	stop	can	comma	confusion			vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Subeventuality confusion=Eventuality

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:english:033-commas-lists-clauses-and-clarity.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): R1-cc-next ×1, 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/english/33-commas-lists-clauses-and-clarity/6/