Silent letters: why French doesn't say everything it writes, sentence 6
Most letters at the very end of a French word are not said: s, t, d, x and z usually stay silent, so Paris sounds like "pa-REE".
Who acts: Paris · What happens: not say, stay, sound · To what, where: Most letters · 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 (Paris), 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 | Most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 2 letters | amod |
| 2 | letters | letter | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 said | nsubj:pass |
| 3 | at | at | ADP | _ | 6 end | case |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 end | det |
| 5 | very | very | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 end | amod |
| 6 | end | end | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 letters | nmod |
| 7 | of | of | ADP | _ | 10 word | case |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 word | det |
| 9 | French | French | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 word | amod |
| 10 | word | word | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 end | nmod |
| 11 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 said | aux:pass |
| 12 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 13 said | advmod |
| 13 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 14 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 15 s | punct |
| 15 | s | 's | PART | Typo=Yes | 13 said | ccomp |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 t | punct |
| 17 | t | t | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 s | conj |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 d | punct |
| 19 | d | d | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 t | conj |
| 20 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 x | punct |
| 21 | x | x | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 t | conj |
| 22 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 23 z | cc |
| 23 | z | z | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 x | conj |
| 24 | usually | usually | ADV | _ | 25 stay | advmod |
| 25 | stay | stay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 said | ccomp |
| 26 | silent | silent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 25 stay | xcomp |
| 27 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 30 sounds | punct |
| 28 | so | so | ADV | _ | 30 sounds | advmod |
| 29 | Paris | Paris | PROPN | Number=Sing | 30 sounds | nsubj |
| 30 | sounds | sound | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 said | parataxis |
| 31 | like | like | ADP | _ | 35 REE | case |
| 32 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 35 REE | punct |
| 33 | pa | pa | NOUN | Number=Sing | 35 REE | compound |
| 34 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 35 REE | punct |
| 35 | REE | ree | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 sounds | obl |
| 36 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 30 sounds | punct |
| 37 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 said | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- changed voice=narrator
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not say speech: assert | present · passive | Most letters at the very end of a French word | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | stay | present | silent, usually property | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 3 | sound | present | Paris | like pa REE | vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
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: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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-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/6/