Silent letters: why French doesn't say everything it writes, sentence 5
The letter h is never breathed out in French, so when a puffing English kid says "HO-tel" in Nice, the French say "oh-TEL", as if the h were invisible.
Who acts: puffing English kid, French, h · What happens: not breathe out, say, be · To what, where: letter, French, Nice, TEL · 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 (puffing English kid, French, h), 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 letter | det |
| 2 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 breathed | nsubj:pass |
| 3 | h | h | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 breathed | nsubj:pass |
| 4 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 breathed | aux:pass |
| 5 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 6 breathed | advmod |
| 6 | breathed | breathe | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 7 | out | out | ADP | _ | 6 breathed | compound:prt |
| 8 | in | in | ADP | _ | 9 French | case |
| 9 | French | French | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 breathed | obl |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 says | punct |
| 11 | so | so | ADV | _ | 17 says | advmod |
| 12 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 17 says | advmod |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 kid | det |
| 14 | puffing | puffing | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 kid | amod |
| 15 | English | English | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 kid | amod |
| 16 | kid | kid | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 says | nsubj |
| 17 | says | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 breathed | conj |
| 18 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 21 tel | punct |
| 19 | HO | HO | PROPN | Number=Sing | 21 tel | compound |
| 20 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 21 tel | punct |
| 21 | tel | tel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 says | parataxis |
| 22 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 21 tel | punct |
| 23 | in | in | ADP | _ | 24 Nice | case |
| 24 | Nice | Nice | PROPN | Number=Sing | 17 says | obl |
| 25 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 28 say | punct |
| 26 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 27 French | det |
| 27 | French | French | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 28 say | nsubj |
| 28 | say | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 says | parataxis |
| 29 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 32 TEL | punct |
| 30 | oh | oh | INTJ | _ | 32 TEL | discourse |
| 31 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 30 oh | punct |
| 32 | TEL | tel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 28 say | obj |
| 33 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 32 TEL | punct |
| 34 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 40 invisible | punct |
| 35 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 40 invisible | mark |
| 36 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 40 invisible | mark |
| 37 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 38 h | det |
| 38 | h | h | NOUN | Number=Sing | 40 invisible | nsubj |
| 39 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 40 invisible | cop |
| 40 | invisible | invisible | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 breathed | conj |
| 41 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 breathed | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not breathe out | present · passive | the letter | French | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme | ||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | present | a puffing English kid | Nice | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | ||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | present | the French | TEL | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent tel=Topic | ||||
| 4 | is a condition, not said to happen | past | the h | invisible property | tree rules |
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:5.
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): R5-strong ×2, R6-punct-agree ×2. 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/5/