The apostrophe war, sentence 11
In 2009 Birmingham City Council dropped apostrophes from its street signs, and many people protested; in 2013 Mid Devon council tried a similar ban and changed its mind after complaints.
Who acts: Birmingham City Council, Devon council, apostrophe · What happens: drop, protest, try, change, sign, mind · To what, where: apostrophes, 2009, similar ban, 2013, mind
This is a sentence of the lesson «The apostrophe war» 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 (Birmingham City Council, Devon council, apostrophe), 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 2009 | case |
| 2 | 2009 | 2009 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 6 dropped | obl |
| 3 | Birmingham | Birmingham | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 Council | compound |
| 4 | City | City | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 Council | compound |
| 5 | Council | Council | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 dropped | nsubj |
| 6 | dropped | drop | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | apostrophes | apostrophe | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 dropped | obj |
| 8 | from | from | ADP | _ | 11 signs | case |
| 9 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 11 signs | nmod:poss |
| 10 | street | street | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 signs | compound |
| 11 | signs | sign | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 dropped | obl |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 people | punct |
| 13 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 people | cc |
| 14 | many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 people | amod |
| 15 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 apostrophes | conj |
| 16 | protested | protest | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 dropped | conj |
| 17 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 23 tried | punct |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 19 2013 | case |
| 19 | 2013 | 2013 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 23 tried | obl |
| 20 | Mid | Mid | PROPN | Number=Sing | 21 Devon | compound |
| 21 | Devon | Devon | PROPN | Number=Sing | 22 council | compound |
| 22 | council | Council | PROPN | Number=Sing | 23 tried | nsubj |
| 23 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 dropped | parataxis |
| 24 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 26 ban | det |
| 25 | similar | similar | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 ban | amod |
| 26 | ban | ban | NOUN | Number=Sing | 23 tried | obj |
| 27 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 28 changed | cc |
| 28 | changed | change | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 23 tried | conj |
| 29 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 30 mind | nmod:poss |
| 30 | mind | mind | NOUN | Number=Sing | 28 changed | obj |
| 31 | after | after | ADP | _ | 32 complaints | case |
| 32 | complaints | complaint | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 changed | obl |
| 33 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 dropped | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | drop | past | Birmingham City Council | apostrophes and many people | 2009 | from apostrophe's street signs | vn put_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.initial_location PP.destination»: agent=Agent apostrophe=Theme in 2009=Destination from sign=Initial_Location | ||
| 2 | protest speech: disagree | past | Birmingham City Council not said here | vn rebel-71.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | try | past | Devon council | a similar ban | 2013 | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ban=Eventuality | |||
| 4 | change | past | Devon council not said here | apostrophe's mind | after complaints | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mind=Patient | |||
| 5 | sign | apostrophe | nom sign «communication transitive»: poss=agent | ||||||
| 6 | mind | apostrophe | nom mind «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |
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:015-the-apostrophe-war.lesson:11.
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, R7-rel-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/15-the-apostrophe-war/11/