Openings that hook the reader, sentence 4

The vase lay in pieces"), a question ("Have you ever wondered why cats purr?"), a strange detail, or starting in the middle of the action and explaining how we got there later.

Who acts: vase, you, cats, we · What happens: lie, wonder, purr, start, explain, get · To what, where: question, pieces, strange detail, middle · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Openings that hook the reader» 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 (vase, you, cats, we), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 vase	det
2	vase	vase	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 lay	nsubj
3	lay	lie	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	in	in	ADP	_	5 pieces	case
5	pieces	piece	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 lay	obl
6	"	"	PUNCT	_	3 lay	punct
7	)	)	PUNCT	_	3 lay	punct
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 question	punct
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 question	det
10	question	question	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 lay	obl
11	(	(	PUNCT	_	16 wondered	punct
12	"	"	PUNCT	_	16 wondered	punct
13	Have	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	16 wondered	aux
14	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	16 wondered	nsubj
15	ever	ever	ADV	PronType=Ind	16 wondered	advmod
16	wondered	wonder	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 question	acl
17	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	19 purr	advmod
18	cats	cat	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 purr	nsubj
19	purr	purr	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	16 wondered	ccomp
20	?	?	PUNCT	_	19 purr	punct
21	"	"	PUNCT	_	19 purr	punct
22	)	)	PUNCT	_	16 wondered	punct
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 detail	punct
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	26 detail	det
25	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 detail	amod
26	detail	detail	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 wondered	obl
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 starting	punct
28	or	or	CCONJ	_	29 starting	cc
29	starting	start	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	16 wondered	advcl
30	in	in	ADP	_	32 middle	case
31	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	32 middle	det
32	middle	middle	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 starting	obl
33	of	of	ADP	_	35 action	case
34	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	35 action	det
35	action	action	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 middle	nmod
36	and	and	CCONJ	_	37 explaining	cc
37	explaining	explain	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	29 starting	conj
38	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	40 got	advmod
39	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	40 got	nsubj
40	got	get	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	37 explaining	ccomp
41	there	there	ADV	PronType=Dem	40 got	advmod
42	later	late	ADV	Degree=Cmp	40 got	advmod
43	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 lay	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: changed voice=narrator

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	lie	past	the vase	a question	pieces			vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in piece=Location
2	wonder speech: ask	present	you	a strange detail		ever		tree rules
3	purr	present	cats					vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	start in a quote	gerund	you not said here		the middle of the action			vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
5	explain speech: assert in a quote	gerund	you not said here					vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
6	get in a quote	past	we		there		late property	vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer

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:040-openings-that-hook-the-reader.lesson:4.

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 ×4. 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/40-openings-that-hook-the-reader/4/