Silent letters and the mystery of -ough, sentence 0
A silent letter is written but not said, like the k in knee or the b in lamb; most of them are fossils of sounds people really said hundreds of years ago, before the sounds wore away and the spelling stayed.
Who acts: k, most, people, sounds, spelling · What happens: write, not say, be, say, wear away, stay · To what, where: silent letter, fossils, sounds · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Silent letters and the mystery of -ough» 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 (k, most, people, sounds), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 letter | det |
| 2 | silent | silent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 letter | amod |
| 3 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 written | nsubj:pass |
| 4 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 written | aux:pass |
| 5 | written | write | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 6 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 8 said | cc |
| 7 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 8 said | advmod |
| 8 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 5 written | conj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 k | punct |
| 10 | like | like | ADP | _ | 12 k | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 k | det |
| 12 | k | k | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 said | nsubj |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 14 knee | case |
| 14 | knee | knee | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 k | nmod |
| 15 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 17 b | cc |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 b | det |
| 17 | b | b | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 k | conj |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 19 lamb | case |
| 19 | lamb | lamb | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 b | nmod |
| 20 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 25 fossils | punct |
| 21 | most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 25 fossils | nsubj |
| 22 | of | of | ADP | _ | 23 them | case |
| 23 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 21 most | nmod |
| 24 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 25 fossils | cop |
| 25 | fossils | fossil | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 k | appos |
| 26 | of | of | ADP | _ | 27 sounds | case |
| 27 | sounds | sound | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 fossils | nmod |
| 28 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 30 said | nsubj |
| 29 | really | really | ADV | _ | 30 said | advmod |
| 30 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 27 sounds | acl:relcl |
| 31 | hundreds | hundred | NOUN | Number=Plur | 34 ago | obl |
| 32 | of | of | ADP | _ | 33 years | case |
| 33 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 hundreds | nmod |
| 34 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 30 said | advmod |
| 35 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 39 wore | punct |
| 36 | before | before | SCONJ | _ | 39 wore | mark |
| 37 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 38 sounds | det |
| 38 | sounds | sound | NOUN | Number=Plur | 39 wore | nsubj |
| 39 | wore | wear | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 30 said | advcl |
| 40 | away | away | ADV | _ | 39 wore | advmod |
| 41 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 44 stayed | cc |
| 42 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 43 spelling | det |
| 43 | spelling | spelling | NOUN | Number=Sing | 44 stayed | nsubj |
| 44 | stayed | stay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 39 wore | conj |
| 45 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 written | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | write | present · passive | a silent letter | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme | |||||
| 2 | not say speech: assert | participle | the k in knee or the b in lamb | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | is a | present | most of k | fossils | of sounds | tree rules | |||
| 4 | say speech: assert | past | people | sounds not said here | ago property | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent sound=Topic | |||
| 5 | wear away | past | the sounds | away property | vn wipe_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 6 | stay | past | the spelling | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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:language:013-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough.lesson:0.
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 ×3, 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/13-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough/0/