Mandarin compared with English, sentence 1
Mei says "mā, má, mǎ, mà" and her friend hears "ma, ma, ma, ma"; but to Mei they are four words, mother, hemp, horse and scold, because in Mandarin the rise and fall of your voice (the tone) is part of the word.
Who acts: Mei, friend, ma, rise, voice · What happens: say, hears, be, rise · To what, where: mā, ma, four words, part, Mandarin · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Mandarin compared with English» 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 (Mei, friend, ma, rise), 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 | Mei | mei | PROPN | Number=Sing | 2 says | nsubj |
| 2 | says | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 mā | punct |
| 4 | mā | mā | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 says | obj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 má | punct |
| 6 | má | má | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 mā | conj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 mǎ | punct |
| 8 | mǎ | mǎ | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 mā | conj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 mà | punct |
| 10 | mà | mà | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 mǎ | appos |
| 11 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 10 mà | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 hears | cc |
| 13 | her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 14 friend | nmod:poss |
| 14 | friend | friend | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 hears | nsubj |
| 15 | hears | hears | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 says | conj |
| 16 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 ma | punct |
| 17 | ma | ma | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 hears | obj |
| 18 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 ma | punct |
| 19 | ma | ma | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 ma | conj |
| 20 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 ma | punct |
| 21 | ma | ma | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 ma | conj |
| 22 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 23 ma | punct |
| 23 | ma | ma | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 ma | appos |
| 24 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 ma | punct |
| 25 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 28 Mei | punct |
| 26 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 32 words | cc |
| 27 | to | to | ADP | _ | 28 Mei | case |
| 28 | Mei | mei | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | obl |
| 29 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 32 words | nsubj |
| 30 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 32 words | cop |
| 31 | four | four | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 32 words | nummod |
| 32 | words | word | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 says | conj |
| 33 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 34 mother | punct |
| 34 | mother | mother | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | conj |
| 35 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 36 hemp | punct |
| 36 | hemp | hemp | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | conj |
| 37 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 38 horse | punct |
| 38 | horse | horse | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | conj |
| 39 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 40 scold | cc |
| 40 | scold | scold | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | conj |
| 41 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 57 part | punct |
| 42 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 57 part | mark |
| 43 | in | in | ADP | _ | 44 Mandarin | case |
| 44 | Mandarin | Mandarin | PROPN | Number=Sing | 57 part | obl |
| 45 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 46 rise | det |
| 46 | rise | rise | NOUN | Number=Sing | 57 part | nsubj |
| 47 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 48 fall | cc |
| 48 | fall | fall | NOUN | Number=Sing | 46 rise | conj |
| 49 | of | of | ADP | _ | 51 voice | case |
| 50 | your | your | PRON | Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 51 voice | nmod:poss |
| 51 | voice | voice | NOUN | Number=Sing | 46 rise | nmod |
| 52 | ( | ( | PUNCT | _ | 54 tone | punct |
| 53 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 54 tone | det |
| 54 | tone | tone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 51 voice | appos |
| 55 | ) | ) | PUNCT | _ | 54 tone | punct |
| 56 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 57 part | cop |
| 57 | part | part | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 words | advcl |
| 58 | of | of | ADP | _ | 60 word | case |
| 59 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 60 word | det |
| 60 | word | word | NOUN | Number=Sing | 57 part | nmod |
| 61 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 says | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | present | Mei | mā and má and mǎ | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent mā=Topic | ||||
| 2 | hears | present | Mei's friend | ma and ma and ma | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | is a | present | ma | four words and mother and hemp and horse and scold | to Mei | tree rules | |||
| 4 | is a | present | the rise of your voice and fall | part | Mandarin | of the word | tree rules | ||
| 5 | rise | your voice | nom rise «event intransitive»: of=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:034-mandarin-compared-with-english.lesson:1.
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): R6-punct-agree ×2, R8-pos-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/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/1/