How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 9

In Mesopotamia (now mostly Iraq) the Sumerians began writing about 5,200 years ago, pressing a reed into wet clay; Egypt had hieroglyphs at about the same time.

Who acts: Sumerians, Egypt · What happens: begin, write, press, have · To what, where: Mesopotamia, reed, wet clay, hieroglyphs

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 (Sumerians, Egypt), 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	In	in	ADP	_	2 Mesopotamia	case
2	Mesopotamia	Mesopotamia	PROPN	Number=Sing	10 began	obl
3	(	(	PUNCT	_	6 Iraq	punct
4	now	now	ADV	_	6 Iraq	advmod
5	mostly	mostly	ADV	_	6 Iraq	advmod
6	Iraq	Iraq	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 Mesopotamia	appos
7	)	)	PUNCT	_	6 Iraq	punct
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	9 Sumerians	det
9	Sumerians	Sumerian	PROPN	Number=Plur	10 began	nsubj
10	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
11	writing	write	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	10 began	xcomp
12	about	about	ADP	_	13 5,200	case
13	5,200	5,200	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	14 years	nummod
14	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 ago	obl:unmarked
15	ago	ago	ADV	_	11 writing	advmod
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 pressing	punct
17	pressing	press	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	11 writing	advcl
18	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 reed	det
19	reed	reed	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 pressing	obj
20	into	into	ADP	_	22 clay	case
21	wet	wet	ADJ	Degree=Pos	22 clay	amod
22	clay	clay	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 pressing	obl
23	;	;	PUNCT	_	25 had	punct
24	Egypt	Egypt	PROPN	Number=Sing	25 had	nsubj
25	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 began	parataxis
26	hieroglyphs	hieroglyph	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 had	obj
27	at	at	ADP	_	31 time	case
28	about	about	ADV	_	31 time	advmod
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	31 time	det
30	same	same	ADJ	Degree=Pos	31 time	amod
31	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 had	obl
32	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 began	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	begin	past	the Sumerians		Mesopotamia			vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	write	gerund	the Sumerians not said here				ago property	vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	press	gerund	the Sumerians not said here	a reed	wet clay			vn push-12-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent reed=Theme
4	have	past	Egypt	hieroglyphs		time		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hieroglyph=Patient

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:9.

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 ×3. 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/9/