Silent letters and the mystery of -ough, sentence 17
"Ghoti" is a famous joke spelling of fish (gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation); real English never uses those letters that way at the start or end of a word, so it is a joke, not a rule.
Who acts: Ghoti, real English, spelling · What happens: be, not use · To what, where: famous joke spelling, letters, start, joke
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 (Ghoti, real English, spelling), 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 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 Ghoti | punct |
| 2 | Ghoti | Ghoti | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 spelling | nsubj |
| 3 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 Ghoti | punct |
| 4 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 spelling | cop |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 spelling | det |
| 6 | famous | famous | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 spelling | amod |
| 7 | joke | joke | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 spelling | compound |
| 8 | spelling | spelling | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 9 | of | of | ADP | _ | 10 fish | case |
| 10 | fish | fish | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 spelling | nmod |
| 11 | ( | ( | PUNCT | _ | 12 gh | punct |
| 12 | gh | gh | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 spelling | appos |
| 13 | as | as | ADP | ExtPos=ADP | 15 tough | case |
| 14 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 as | fixed |
| 15 | tough | tough | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 gh | nmod |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 o | punct |
| 17 | o | o | ADV | _ | 20 women | advmod |
| 18 | as | as | ADP | _ | 20 women | case |
| 19 | in | in | ADP | _ | 20 women | case |
| 20 | women | woman | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 gh | conj |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 ti | punct |
| 22 | ti | ti | X | _ | 12 gh | conj |
| 23 | as | as | ADP | _ | 25 nation | case |
| 24 | in | in | ADP | _ | 25 nation | case |
| 25 | nation | nation | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 gh | obl |
| 26 | ) | ) | PUNCT | _ | 12 gh | punct |
| 27 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 31 uses | punct |
| 28 | real | real | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 29 English | amod |
| 29 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 31 uses | nsubj |
| 30 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 31 uses | advmod |
| 31 | uses | use | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 spelling | conj |
| 32 | those | that | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 33 letters | det |
| 33 | letters | letter | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 uses | obj |
| 34 | that | that | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 35 way | det |
| 35 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 uses | obl |
| 36 | at | at | ADP | _ | 38 start | case |
| 37 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 38 start | det |
| 38 | start | start | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 uses | obl |
| 39 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 40 end | cc |
| 40 | end | end | NOUN | Number=Sing | 38 start | conj |
| 41 | of | of | ADP | _ | 43 word | case |
| 42 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 43 word | det |
| 43 | word | word | NOUN | Number=Sing | 40 end | nmod |
| 44 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 49 joke | punct |
| 45 | so | so | ADV | _ | 49 joke | advmod |
| 46 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 49 joke | nsubj |
| 47 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 49 joke | cop |
| 48 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 49 joke | det |
| 49 | joke | joke | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 spelling | conj |
| 50 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 53 rule | punct |
| 51 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 53 rule | advmod |
| 52 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 53 rule | det |
| 53 | rule | rule | NOUN | Number=Sing | 49 joke | conj |
| 54 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 spelling | 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 | present | Ghoti | a famous joke spelling and a joke and a rule | of fish | tree rules | |||
| 2 | not use | present | real English | that letters | the start or end of a word | that way obl | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=Patient | ||
| 3 | is a | present | spelling | a joke and a rule | tree rules |
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:17.
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, 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/13-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough/17/