Grammar puzzles, part one, sentence 6
In "The old man the boat", "man" is the verb meaning to crew; a sentence that tricks you into reading it wrongly at first is called a garden-path sentence.
Who acts: man, verb, sentence · What happens: be, mean, crew, trick, read, call · To what, where: verb, you, sentence, boat · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Grammar puzzles, part one» of the language 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 (man, verb, sentence), 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 | _ | 7 boat | case |
| 2 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 man | punct |
| 3 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 man | det |
| 4 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 man | amod |
| 5 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 boat | nsubj |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 boat | det |
| 7 | boat | boat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 called | obl |
| 8 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 man | punct |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 man | punct |
| 10 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 man | punct |
| 11 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 verb | nsubj |
| 12 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 11 man | punct |
| 13 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 verb | cop |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 verb | det |
| 15 | verb | verb | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 called | conj |
| 16 | meaning | mean | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 15 verb | acl |
| 17 | to | to | ADP | _ | 18 crew | case |
| 18 | crew | crew | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 16 meaning | xcomp |
| 19 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 21 sentence | punct |
| 20 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 sentence | det |
| 21 | sentence | sentence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 called | nsubj:pass |
| 22 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 23 tricks | nsubj |
| 23 | tricks | trick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 21 sentence | acl:relcl |
| 24 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 23 tricks | obj |
| 25 | into | into | SCONJ | _ | 26 reading | mark |
| 26 | reading | read | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 23 tricks | advcl |
| 27 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 26 reading | obj |
| 28 | wrongly | wrongly | ADV | _ | 26 reading | advmod |
| 29 | at | at | ADP | _ | 30 first | case |
| 30 | first | first | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 26 reading | obl |
| 31 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 32 called | aux:pass |
| 32 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 33 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 37 sentence | det |
| 34 | garden | garden | NOUN | Number=Sing | 36 path | compound |
| 35 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 34 garden | punct |
| 36 | path | path | NOUN | Number=Sing | 37 sentence | compound |
| 37 | sentence | sentence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 called | xcomp |
| 38 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 32 called | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- character
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- changed polarity=none
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | man | the verb | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | mean | gerund | the verb not said here | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | crew not said to happen | infinitive | the verb not said here | vn captain-29.8-1 «NP V PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | trick | present | a sentence | you | vn trick-59.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Patient | ||||
| 5 | read | gerund | a sentence not said here | sentence | wrongly property | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP PP.value»: agent=Agent it=Theme at first=Value | |||
| 6 | call | present · passive | a sentence | the boat | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |
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:language:011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson:6.
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/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/6/