How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 15
The Phoenicians were sea-traders from cities such as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos in today's Lebanon, famous for a costly purple dye made from sea snails; about 3,000 years ago they spread a 22-letter alphabet around the Mediterranean.
Who acts: Phoenicians · What happens: be, make, spread · To what, where: sea traders, cities, costly purple dye, letter alphabet, Mediterranean
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 (Phoenicians), 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 | 2 Phoenicians | det |
| 2 | Phoenicians | Phoenician | PROPN | Number=Plur | 6 traders | nsubj |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 traders | cop |
| 4 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 traders | compound |
| 5 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 4 sea | punct |
| 6 | traders | trader | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 7 | from | from | ADP | _ | 8 cities | case |
| 8 | cities | city | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 traders | nmod |
| 9 | such | such | ADJ | Degree=Pos ExtPos=ADP | 11 Tyre | case |
| 10 | as | as | ADP | _ | 9 such | fixed |
| 11 | Tyre | Tyre | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 cities | nmod |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 Sidon | punct |
| 13 | Sidon | Sidon | PROPN | Number=Sing | 11 Tyre | conj |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 Byblos | cc |
| 15 | Byblos | Byblos | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 Sidon | conj |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 19 Lebanon | case |
| 17 | today | today | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 Lebanon | nmod:poss |
| 18 | 's | 's | PART | _ | 17 today | case |
| 19 | Lebanon | Lebanon | PROPN | Number=Sing | 11 Tyre | nmod |
| 20 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 famous | punct |
| 21 | famous | famous | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 Tyre | conj |
| 22 | for | for | ADP | _ | 26 dye | case |
| 23 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 26 dye | det |
| 24 | costly | costly | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 dye | amod |
| 25 | purple | purple | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 dye | amod |
| 26 | dye | dye | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 famous | obl |
| 27 | made | make | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 26 dye | acl |
| 28 | from | from | ADP | _ | 30 snails | case |
| 29 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 snails | compound |
| 30 | snails | snail | NOUN | Number=Plur | 27 made | obl |
| 31 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 37 spread | punct |
| 32 | about | about | ADV | _ | 33 3,000 | advmod |
| 33 | 3,000 | 3000 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 34 years | nummod |
| 34 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 35 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 35 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 37 spread | advmod |
| 36 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 37 spread | nsubj |
| 37 | spread | spread | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 traders | parataxis |
| 38 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 42 alphabet | det |
| 39 | 22 | 22 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 41 letter | nummod |
| 40 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 39 22 | punct |
| 41 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 42 alphabet | compound |
| 42 | alphabet | alphabet | NOUN | Number=Sing | 37 spread | obj |
| 43 | around | around | ADP | _ | 45 Mediterranean | case |
| 44 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 45 Mediterranean | det |
| 45 | Mediterranean | Mediterranean | PROPN | Number=Sing | 42 alphabet | nmod |
| 46 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 traders | 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 | is a | past | the Phoenicians | sea traders | cities such Tyre in today's Lebanon and Sidon and Byblos | tree rules | |||
| 2 | make | participle | a costly purple dye not said here | from sea snails | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V PP»: agent=Asset from snail=Material | ||||
| 3 | spread | past | Phoenicians = phoenician | a letter alphabet | the Mediterranean | ago property | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent alphabet=Theme around mediterranean=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:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:15.
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, 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/15/