China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall, sentence 19

Zhang Qian travelled west for the Han emperor around 138–126 BC, was held prisoner by the Xiongnu, horsemen of the northern steppe, for about ten years, and brought back knowledge of Central Asia that helped open the Silk Road; that was more than 1,300 years before the Italian Marco Polo travelled east to China.

Who acts: Zhang, Xiongnu, knowledge, that, Italian Marco Polo · What happens: travel, hold, bring back, help, open, be · To what, where: 138, prisoner, knowledge, Silk Road, 1,300 years, China

This is a sentence of the lesson «China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall» 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 (Zhang, Xiongnu, knowledge, that), 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	Zhang	Zhang	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 travelled	nsubj
2	Qian	Qian	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 Zhang	flat
3	travelled	travel	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	west	west	ADV	_	3 travelled	advmod
5	for	for	ADP	_	8 emperor	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 emperor	det
7	Han	Han	PROPN	Number=Sing	8 emperor	compound
8	emperor	emperor	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 travelled	obl
9	around	around	ADP	_	10 138	case
10	138	138	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	3 travelled	obl
11	–	–	SYM	ExtPos=ADP	12 126	case
12	126	126	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	10 138	nmod
13	BC	BC	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 138	nmod:unmarked
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 held	punct
15	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 held	aux:pass
16	held	hold	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 travelled	conj
17	prisoner	prisoner	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 held	xcomp
18	by	by	ADP	_	20 Xiongnu	case
19	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 Xiongnu	det
20	Xiongnu	Xiongnu	PROPN	Number=Sing	16 held	obl
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 horsemen	punct
22	horsemen	horseman	NOUN	Number=Plur	20 Xiongnu	appos
23	of	of	ADP	_	26 steppe	case
24	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 steppe	det
25	northern	northern	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 steppe	amod
26	steppe	steppe	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 horsemen	nmod
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 years	punct
28	for	for	ADP	_	31 years	case
29	about	about	ADV	_	30 ten	advmod
30	ten	ten	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	31 years	nummod
31	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 held	obl
32	,	,	PUNCT	_	34 brought	punct
33	and	and	CCONJ	_	34 brought	cc
34	brought	bring	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 travelled	conj
35	back	back	ADV	_	34 brought	advmod
36	knowledge	knowledge	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 brought	obj
37	of	of	ADP	_	39 Asia	case
38	Central	Central	PROPN	Number=Sing	39 Asia	compound
39	Asia	Asia	PROPN	Number=Sing	36 knowledge	nmod
40	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	41 helped	nsubj
41	helped	help	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	36 knowledge	acl:relcl
42	open	open	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	41 helped	xcomp
43	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	45 Road	det
44	Silk	Silk	PROPN	Number=Sing	45 Road	compound
45	Road	Road	PROPN	Number=Sing	42 open	obj
46	;	;	PUNCT	_	52 years	punct
47	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	52 years	nsubj
48	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	52 years	cop
49	more	more	ADJ	Degree=Cmp ExtPos=ADV	51 1,300	advmod
50	than	than	ADP	_	49 more	fixed
51	1,300	1,300	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	52 years	nummod
52	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 travelled	obl
53	before	before	SCONJ	_	58 travelled	mark
54	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	57 Polo	det
55	Italian	Italian	ADJ	Degree=Pos	57 Polo	amod
56	Marco	Marco	PROPN	Number=Sing	57 Polo	compound
57	Polo	Polo	PROPN	Number=Sing	58 travelled	nsubj
58	travelled	travel	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	52 years	advcl
59	east	east	ADV	_	58 travelled	advmod
60	to	to	ADP	_	61 China	case
61	China	China	PROPN	Number=Sing	58 travelled	obl
62	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 travelled	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: kept the draft

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	travel	past	Zhang			138 – 126 BC		for the Han emperor; west property	vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme around 138=Trajectory
2	hold	past · passive	the Xiongnu	prisoner			year		vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	bring back	past	Zhang not said here	knowledge of Central Asia					vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent knowledge=Theme
4	help	past	knowledge of Central Asia						vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
5	open	infinitive	knowledge of Central Asia not said here	the Silk Road					vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location road=Theme
6	is a	past	that	1,300 years					tree rules
7	travel	past	the Italian Marco Polo		China			east property	vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme to china=Destination

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:052-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall.lesson:19.

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): R1-cc-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-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/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/19/