How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 13
About 3,800 years ago, workers in Egypt and Sinai who spoke a language related to Hebrew and Arabic took Egyptian picture-signs and used each one only for the first sound of its name: this was the first alphabet.
Who acts: workers, this, SOUND · What happens: speak, take, use, be, name · To what, where: language, Egyptian picture signs, one, first alphabet · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet» 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 (workers, this, SOUND), 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 | About | about | ADV | _ | 2 3,800 | advmod |
| 2 | 3,800 | 3,800 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 3 years | nummod |
| 3 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 4 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 12 spoke | advmod |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 ago | punct |
| 6 | workers | worker | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 spoke | nsubj |
| 7 | in | in | ADP | _ | 8 Egypt | case |
| 8 | Egypt | Egypt | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 workers | nmod |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 Sinai | cc |
| 10 | Sinai | Sinai | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 Egypt | conj |
| 11 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 12 spoke | nsubj |
| 12 | spoke | speak | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 language | det |
| 14 | language | language | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 spoke | obj |
| 15 | related | related | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 language | amod |
| 16 | to | to | ADP | _ | 17 Hebrew | case |
| 17 | Hebrew | Hebrew | PROPN | Number=Sing | 15 related | obl |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 Arabic | cc |
| 19 | Arabic | Arabic | PROPN | Number=Sing | 17 Hebrew | conj |
| 20 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 12 spoke | conj |
| 21 | Egyptian | Egyptian | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 24 signs | amod |
| 22 | picture | picture | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 signs | compound |
| 23 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 22 picture | punct |
| 24 | signs | sign | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 took | obj |
| 25 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 26 used | cc |
| 26 | used | use | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 20 took | conj |
| 27 | each | each | DET | PronType=Tot | 28 one | det |
| 28 | one | one | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 used | obj |
| 29 | only | only | ADV | _ | 28 one | advmod |
| 30 | for | for | ADP | _ | 33 sound | case |
| 31 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 33 sound | det |
| 32 | first | first | ADJ | Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 33 sound | amod |
| 33 | sound | sound | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 used | obl |
| 34 | of | of | ADP | _ | 36 name | case |
| 35 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 36 name | nmod:poss |
| 36 | name | name | NOUN | Number=Sing | 33 sound | nmod |
| 37 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 42 alphabet | punct |
| 38 | this | this | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 42 alphabet | nsubj |
| 39 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 42 alphabet | cop |
| 40 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 42 alphabet | det |
| 41 | first | first | ADJ | Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 42 alphabet | amod |
| 42 | alphabet | alphabet | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 spoke | parataxis |
| 43 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 12 spoke | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | speak speech: other | past | workers in Egypt and Sinai | a language | ago property | tree rules | |||
| 2 | take | past | workers in Egypt and Sinai not said here | Egyptian picture signs | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sign=Theme | ||||
| 3 | use | past | workers in Egypt and Sinai not said here | each one | for the first sound of SOUND's name | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP PP.predicate»: agent=Agent one=Theme for sound=Eventuality | |||
| 4 | is a | past | this | the first alphabet | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | name | SOUND | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |
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:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:13.
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, 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/82-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet/13/