China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties, sentence 11

The Shang dynasty, about 1600–1046 BC, carved questions on turtle shells and ox bones, heated them and read the cracks as answers from their ancestors; these oracle bones hold the oldest known Chinese writing.

Who acts: Shang dynasty, oracle bones · What happens: carve, heat, read, hold, know · To what, where: questions, turtle shells, cracks, oldest known Chinese writing

This is a sentence of the lesson «China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties» of the history 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 (Shang dynasty, oracle bones), 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	3 dynasty	det
2	Shang	Shang	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 dynasty	compound
3	dynasty	dynasty	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 carved	nsubj
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 1600	punct
5	about	about	ADP	_	6 1600	case
6	1600	1600	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	3 dynasty	nmod
7	–	–	SYM	ExtPos=ADP	8 1046	case
8	1046	1046	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	6 1600	nmod
9	BC	BC	PROPN	Number=Sing	6 1600	nmod:unmarked
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 carved	punct
11	carved	carve	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
12	questions	question	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 carved	obj
13	on	on	ADP	_	15 shells	case
14	turtle	turtle	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 shells	compound
15	shells	shell	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 questions	nmod
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 bones	cc
17	ox	ox	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 bones	compound
18	bones	bone	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 shells	conj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 heated	punct
20	heated	heat	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 carved	conj
21	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 heated	obj
22	and	and	CCONJ	_	23 read	cc
23	read	read	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 heated	conj
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	25 cracks	det
25	cracks	crack	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 read	obj
26	as	as	ADP	_	27 answers	case
27	answers	answer	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 read	obl
28	from	from	ADP	_	30 ancestors	case
29	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	30 ancestors	nmod:poss
30	ancestors	ancestor	NOUN	Number=Plur	27 answers	nmod
31	;	;	PUNCT	_	35 hold	punct
32	these	this	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	34 bones	det
33	oracle	oracle	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 bones	compound
34	bones	bone	NOUN	Number=Plur	35 hold	nsubj
35	hold	hold	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 carved	parataxis
36	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	40 writing	det
37	oldest	old	ADJ	Degree=Sup	40 writing	amod
38	known	know	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	40 writing	amod
39	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	Degree=Pos	40 writing	amod
40	writing	writing	NOUN	Number=Sing	35 hold	obj
41	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 carved	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	carve	past	the Shang dynasty about 1600 – 1046 BC	questions	turtle shells and ox bones		vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent question=Theme on shell=Destination
2	heat	past	the Shang dynasty about 1600 – 1046 BC not said here	questions = question			vn cooking-45.3 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent they=Patient
3	read	past	the Shang dynasty about 1600 – 1046 BC not said here	the cracks		as answers from answers's ancestors	vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer crack=Stimulus as answer=Attribute
4	hold	present	this oracle bones	the oldest known Chinese writing			vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent writing=Theme
5	know	participle					vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: 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:history:051-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties.lesson:11.

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 ×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/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/11/