Is there one proper English? The big arguments, sentence 0
People have moaned that the young are "ruining English" for hundreds of years: the writer Jonathan Swift complained in 1712 and wanted rules to stop English changing; English kept changing anyway, and it is still here.
Who acts: People, young, writer, English · What happens: moan, ruin, complain, want, stop, changing · To what, where: English, 1712, rules · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Is there one proper English? The big arguments» 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 (People, young, writer, English), 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 | People | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 moaned | nsubj |
| 2 | have | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 moaned | aux |
| 3 | moaned | moan | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 4 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 9 ruining | mark |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 young | det |
| 6 | young | young | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 ruining | nsubj |
| 7 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 ruining | aux |
| 8 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 ruining | punct |
| 9 | ruining | ruin | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 3 moaned | ccomp |
| 10 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 9 ruining | obj |
| 11 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 ruining | punct |
| 12 | for | for | ADP | _ | 13 hundreds | case |
| 13 | hundreds | hundred | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 ruining | obl |
| 14 | of | of | ADP | _ | 15 years | case |
| 15 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 hundreds | nmod |
| 16 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 21 complained | punct |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 writer | det |
| 18 | writer | writer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 complained | nsubj |
| 19 | Jonathan | Jonathan | PROPN | Number=Sing | 18 writer | appos |
| 20 | Swift | Swift | PROPN | Number=Sing | 19 Jonathan | flat |
| 21 | complained | complain | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 moaned | conj |
| 22 | in | in | ADP | _ | 23 1712 | case |
| 23 | 1712 | 1712 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 21 complained | obl |
| 24 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 25 wanted | cc |
| 25 | wanted | want | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 complained | conj |
| 26 | rules | rule | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 wanted | obj |
| 27 | to | to | PART | _ | 28 stop | mark |
| 28 | stop | stop | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 26 rules | acl |
| 29 | English | English | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 30 changing | nsubj |
| 30 | changing | changing | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 28 stop | xcomp |
| 31 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 33 kept | punct |
| 32 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 33 kept | nsubj |
| 33 | kept | keep | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 complained | parataxis |
| 34 | changing | change | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 33 kept | xcomp |
| 35 | anyway | anyway | ADV | _ | 34 changing | advmod |
| 36 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 41 here | punct |
| 37 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 41 here | cc |
| 38 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 41 here | nsubj |
| 39 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 41 here | cop |
| 40 | still | still | ADV | _ | 41 here | advmod |
| 41 | here | here | ADV | PronType=Dem | 3 moaned | advmod |
| 42 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 moaned | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | moan | present · perfect | People | vn complain-37.8 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | ruin in a quote | present · progressive | the young | English | for hundreds of years | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent english=Patient | |||
| 3 | complain speech: other | past | the writer | 1712 | vn complain-37.8 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 4 | want | past | the writer not said here | rules | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot rule=Theme | ||||
| 5 | stop | to-infinitive | the writer not said here | rules not said here | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 6 | changing | gerund | English | tree rules | |||||
| 7 | keep | past | English | tree rules | |||||
| 8 | change | gerund | English not said here | anyway property | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 9 | is | present | writer | still | here property | 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:020-is-there-one-proper-english.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 ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, 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/20-is-there-one-proper-english/0/