How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 20

Chinese writing never became an alphabet: it uses thousands of characters, and a reader needs about three thousand of them for a newspaper, while English needs 26 letters.

Who acts: Chinese writing, alphabet, reader, English · What happens: not become, use, need · To what, where: alphabet, thousands, three thousand, 26 letters

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 (Chinese writing, alphabet, reader, English), 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	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 writing	amod
2	writing	writing	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 became	nsubj
3	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	4 became	advmod
4	became	become	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 alphabet	det
6	alphabet	alphabet	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 became	xcomp
7	:	:	PUNCT	_	9 uses	punct
8	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 uses	nsubj
9	uses	use	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 became	parataxis
10	thousands	thousand	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 uses	obj
11	of	of	ADP	_	12 characters	case
12	characters	character	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 thousands	nmod
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 needs	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 needs	cc
15	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	16 reader	det
16	reader	reader	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 needs	nsubj
17	needs	need	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 uses	conj
18	about	about	ADV	_	20 thousand	advmod
19	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	20 thousand	compound
20	thousand	thousand	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	17 needs	obj
21	of	of	ADP	_	22 them	case
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 thousand	nmod
23	for	for	ADP	_	25 newspaper	case
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 newspaper	det
25	newspaper	newspaper	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 needs	obl
26	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 needs	punct
27	while	while	SCONJ	_	29 needs	mark
28	English	English	PROPN	Number=Sing	29 needs	nsubj
29	needs	need	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 needs	advcl
30	26	26	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	31 letters	nummod
31	letters	letter	NOUN	Number=Plur	29 needs	obj
32	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 became	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	not become	past	Chinese writing	a alphabet		vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient
2	use	present	alphabet	thousands of characters		vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thousand=Patient
3	need	present	a reader	three thousand of characters	for a newspaper	vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot thousand=Theme
4	need	present	English	26 letters		vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot letter=Theme

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:20.

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. 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/20/