How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 14

That is why our A began as an ox's head («alp» meant ox), B as a house («bet»), M as wavy water («mem») and O as an eye.

Who acts: That, A, alp · What happens: be, begin, mean · To what, where: ox

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 (That, A, alp), 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	That	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	3 why	nsubj
2	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 why	cop
3	why	why	ADV	PronType=Rel	root	root
4	our	our	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 A	nmod:poss
5	A	A	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 began	nsubj
6	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 why	advcl:relcl
7	as	as	ADP	_	11 head	case
8	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 ox	det
9	ox	ox	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 head	nmod:poss
10	's	's	PART	_	9 ox	case
11	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 began	obl
12	(	(	PUNCT	_	14 alp	punct
13	«	«	PUNCT	_	14 alp	punct
14	alp	alp	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 why	appos
15	»	»	PUNCT	_	14 alp	punct
16	meant	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 alp	acl
17	ox	ox	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 meant	obj
18	)	)	PUNCT	_	17 ox	punct
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 B	punct
20	B	B	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 A	conj
21	as	as	ADP	_	23 house	case
22	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	23 house	det
23	house	house	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 B	nmod
24	(	(	PUNCT	_	26 bet	punct
25	«	«	PUNCT	_	26 bet	punct
26	bet	bet	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 house	appos
27	»	»	PUNCT	_	26 bet	punct
28	)	)	PUNCT	_	26 bet	punct
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 M	punct
30	M	M	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 B	conj
31	as	as	ADP	_	33 water	case
32	wavy	wavy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	33 water	amod
33	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 M	nmod
34	(	(	PUNCT	_	36 mem	punct
35	«	«	PUNCT	_	36 mem	punct
36	mem	mem	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 M	appos
37	»	»	PUNCT	_	36 mem	punct
38	)	)	PUNCT	_	36 mem	punct
39	and	and	CCONJ	_	40 O	cc
40	O	o	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 M	conj
41	as	as	ADP	_	43 eye	case
42	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	43 eye	det
43	eye	eye	NOUN	Number=Sing	40 O	obl
44	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 why	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: narrate
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: changed act=narrate, polarity=none

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is	present	That		why property	tree rules
2	begin	past	our A and B as a house and M as wavy water and O		as a ox's head	vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
3	mean	past	alp not said here	ox		vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ox=Topic

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:14.

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): R6-punct-agree ×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/82-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet/14/