Punctuation that changes meaning, sentence 2

"A panda eats shoots and leaves" means it eats bamboo shoots and leaves; add commas, "eats, shoots and leaves", and the panda has lunch, fires a gun and walks out; that joke is the title of a famous British book about punctuation.

Who acts: panda, commas, joke · What happens: eat, mean, add, have, fire, walk out · To what, where: shoots, bamboo shoots, lunch, gun, title · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Punctuation that changes meaning» 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 (panda, commas, joke), 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	_	4 eats	punct
2	A	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	3 panda	det
3	panda	panda	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 eats	nsubj
4	eats	eat	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 means	ccomp
5	shoots	shoot	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 eats	obj
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	7 leaves	cc
7	leaves	leaf	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 shoots	conj
8	"	"	PUNCT	_	4 eats	punct
9	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 eats	nsubj
11	eats	eat	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 means	ccomp
12	bamboo	bamboo	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 shoots	compound
13	shoots	shoot	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 eats	obj
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 leaves	cc
15	leaves	leaf	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 shoots	conj
16	;	;	PUNCT	_	17 add	punct
17	add	add	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	9 means	conj
18	commas	comma	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 add	obj
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 add	punct
20	"	"	PUNCT	_	21 eats	punct
21	eats	eat	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 add	parataxis
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 shoots	punct
23	shoots	shoot	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 eats	conj
24	and	and	CCONJ	_	25 leaves	cc
25	leaves	leaf	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 eats	conj
26	"	"	PUNCT	_	21 eats	punct
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 has	punct
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	31 has	cc
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 panda	det
30	panda	panda	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 has	nsubj
31	has	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 means	conj
32	lunch	lunch	NOUN	Number=Sing	31 has	obj
33	,	,	PUNCT	_	34 fires	punct
34	fires	fire	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	31 has	conj
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	36 gun	det
36	gun	gun	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 fires	obj
37	and	and	CCONJ	_	38 walks	cc
38	walks	walk	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	34 fires	conj
39	out	out	ADV	_	38 walks	advmod
40	;	;	PUNCT	_	45 title	punct
41	that	that	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	42 joke	det
42	joke	joke	NOUN	Number=Sing	45 title	nsubj
43	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	45 title	cop
44	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	45 title	det
45	title	title	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 means	parataxis
46	of	of	ADP	_	50 book	case
47	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	50 book	det
48	famous	famous	ADJ	Degree=Pos	50 book	amod
49	British	British	ADJ	Degree=Pos	50 book	amod
50	book	book	NOUN	Number=Sing	45 title	nmod
51	about	about	ADP	_	52 punctuation	case
52	punctuation	punctuation	NOUN	Number=Sing	50 book	nmod
53	.	.	PUNCT	_	9 means	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: changed voice=narrator

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	eat in a quote	present	a panda	shoots and leaves		vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shoot=Patient
2	mean	present				vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	eat	present	panda	bamboo shoots and leaves		vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shoot=Patient
4	add speech: assert	infinitive	commas			vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
5	eat in a quote	present				vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	have	present	the panda	lunch		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lunch=Patient
7	fire	present	the panda not said here	a gun		vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gun=Theme
8	walk out	present	the panda not said here		out property	vn resign-10.11 «NP V»: agent=Agent
9	is a	present	that joke	the title	of a famous British book about punctuation	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:014-punctuation-that-changes-meaning.lesson:2.

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 ×2, 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/language/14-punctuation-that-changes-meaning/2/