Silent letters: why French doesn't say everything it writes, sentence 3
A sleeping letter can wake up when the next word starts with a vowel: les amis sounds like "lay-za-MEE".
Who acts: sleeping letter, next word · What happens: wake up, start, sound, lay · To what, where: za
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 (sleeping letter, next word), 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 | 3 letter | det |
| 2 | sleeping | sleeping | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 letter | amod |
| 3 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 wake | nsubj |
| 4 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 wake | aux |
| 5 | wake | wake | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 6 | up | up | ADP | _ | 5 wake | compound:prt |
| 7 | when | when | SCONJ | _ | 11 starts | mark |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 word | det |
| 9 | next | next | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 word | amod |
| 10 | word | word | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 starts | nsubj |
| 11 | starts | start | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 wake | advcl |
| 12 | with | with | ADP | _ | 14 vowel | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 vowel | det |
| 14 | vowel | vowel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 starts | obl |
| 15 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 17 amis | punct |
| 16 | les | le | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 amis | det |
| 17 | amis | ami | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 vowel | conj |
| 18 | sounds | sound | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 11 starts | conj |
| 19 | like | like | SCONJ | _ | 21 lay | mark |
| 20 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 21 lay | punct |
| 21 | lay | lay | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 18 sounds | advcl |
| 22 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 23 za | punct |
| 23 | za | za | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 lay | obj |
| 24 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 25 MEE | punct |
| 25 | MEE | MEE | PROPN | Number=Sing | 23 za | appos |
| 26 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 25 MEE | punct |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 wake | 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 | can | a sleeping letter | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | |||||
| 2 | start | present | the next word | with a vowel and le amis | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V PP.subeventuality»: agent=Eventuality with vowel=Subeventuality | ||||
| 3 | sound | present | the next word not said here | vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus | |||||
| 4 | lay in a quote | infinitive | the next word not said here | za | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent za=Result |
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:3.
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): no change. 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/3/