Silent letters: why French doesn't say everything it writes, sentence 15
Liaison: a silent final letter wakes up when the next word starts with a vowel sound, so les amis (the friends) sounds like "lay-za-MEE", with the s said as a z.
Who acts: silent final letter, next word, amis, s · What happens: wake up, start, sound, lay, say · To what, where: za · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Silent letters: why French doesn't say everything it writes» of the french 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 (silent final letter, next word, amis, s), 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 | Liaison | liaison | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 wakes | dislocated |
| 2 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 7 wakes | punct |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 letter | det |
| 4 | silent | silent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 letter | amod |
| 5 | final | final | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 letter | amod |
| 6 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 wakes | nsubj |
| 7 | wakes | wake | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | up | up | ADP | _ | 7 wakes | compound:prt |
| 9 | when | when | SCONJ | _ | 13 starts | mark |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 word | det |
| 11 | next | next | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 word | amod |
| 12 | word | word | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 starts | nsubj |
| 13 | starts | start | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 wakes | advcl |
| 14 | with | with | ADP | _ | 17 sound | case |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 17 sound | det |
| 16 | vowel | vowel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 sound | compound |
| 17 | sound | sound | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 starts | obl |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 26 sounds | punct |
| 19 | so | so | ADV | _ | 26 sounds | advmod |
| 20 | les | le | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 amis | det |
| 21 | amis | ami | NOUN | Number=Plur | 26 sounds | nsubj |
| 22 | ( | ( | PUNCT | _ | 24 friends | punct |
| 23 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 24 friends | det |
| 24 | friends | friend | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 amis | conj |
| 25 | ) | ) | PUNCT | _ | 24 friends | punct |
| 26 | sounds | sound | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 wakes | conj |
| 27 | like | like | SCONJ | _ | 29 lay | mark |
| 28 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 29 lay | punct |
| 29 | lay | lay | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 26 sounds | xcomp |
| 30 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 31 za | punct |
| 31 | za | za | NOUN | Number=Sing | 29 lay | obj |
| 32 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 33 MEE | punct |
| 33 | MEE | MEE | PROPN | Number=Sing | 31 za | appos |
| 34 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 33 MEE | punct |
| 35 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 39 said | punct |
| 36 | with | with | SCONJ | _ | 39 said | mark |
| 37 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 38 s | det |
| 38 | s | s | NOUN | Number=Plur | 39 said | nsubj |
| 39 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 29 lay | conj |
| 40 | as | as | ADP | _ | 42 z | case |
| 41 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 42 z | det |
| 42 | z | z | NOUN | Number=Sing | 39 said | obl |
| 43 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 1 Liaison | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | wake up | present | a silent final letter | Liaison dislocated | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | ||||
| 2 | start | present | the next word | with a vowel sound | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V PP.subeventuality»: agent=Eventuality with sound=Subeventuality | ||||
| 3 | sound | present | le amis and the friends | tree rules | |||||
| 4 | lay in a quote | infinitive | le amis and the friends not said here | za | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent za=Result | ||||
| 5 | say speech: assert | past | the s | as a z | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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:french:001-silent-letters-why-french-doesnt-say-everything-it-writes.lesson:15.
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 ×1, 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/french/1-silent-letters-why-french-doesnt-say-everything-it-writes/15/