Is there one proper English? The big arguments, sentence 3
English has no boss: unlike French, which has an official Académie Française, nobody in London decides what is proper; dictionaries record how people use words, they follow the language rather than control it.
Who acts: English, French, nobody, dictionaries, people · What happens: have, decide, be, record, use, follow · To what, where: boss, official Académie, words, language · 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 (English, French, nobody, dictionaries), 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 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 2 has | nsubj |
| 2 | has | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 4 boss | det |
| 4 | boss | boss | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 has | obj |
| 5 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 7 French | punct |
| 6 | unlike | unlike | ADP | _ | 7 French | case |
| 7 | French | French | PROPN | Number=Sing | 2 has | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 has | punct |
| 9 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 10 has | nsubj |
| 10 | has | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 French | acl:relcl |
| 11 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 Académie | det |
| 12 | official | official | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 Académie | amod |
| 13 | Académie | Académie | PROPN | Number=Sing | 10 has | obj |
| 14 | Française | Française | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 Académie | flat |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 nobody | punct |
| 16 | nobody | nobody | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 19 decides | nsubj |
| 17 | in | in | ADP | _ | 18 London | case |
| 18 | London | London | PROPN | Number=Sing | 16 nobody | nmod |
| 19 | decides | decide | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 10 has | conj |
| 20 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 22 proper | nsubj |
| 21 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 22 proper | cop |
| 22 | proper | proper | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 decides | ccomp |
| 23 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 25 record | punct |
| 24 | dictionaries | dictionary | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 record | nsubj |
| 25 | record | record | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 has | conj |
| 26 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 28 use | advmod |
| 27 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 use | nsubj |
| 28 | use | use | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 25 record | advcl |
| 29 | words | word | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 use | obj |
| 30 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 32 follow | punct |
| 31 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 32 follow | nsubj |
| 32 | follow | follow | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 25 record | conj |
| 33 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 34 language | det |
| 34 | language | language | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 follow | obj |
| 35 | rather | rather | ADV | ExtPos=CCONJ | 37 control | cc |
| 36 | than | than | ADP | _ | 35 rather | fixed |
| 37 | control | control | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 32 follow | conj |
| 38 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 37 control | obj |
| 39 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 has | 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 | have | present | English | no boss | unlike French | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boss=Patient | |||
| 2 | have | present | French | a official Académie | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent académie=Patient | ||||
| 3 | decide | present | nobody | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | is | present | proper property | tree rules | |||||
| 5 | record | present | dictionaries | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 6 | use | present | people | words | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent word=Patient | ||||
| 7 | follow | present | People | the language | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent language=Theme | ||||
| 8 | control | infinitive | People not said here | language | vn enforce-63 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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:020-is-there-one-proper-english.lesson:3.
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): no change. 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/3/