Pronouns: I, me, you, they and who, sentence 16

Singular "they" for one person whose gender is unknown has been used since the 1300s; some people today also use it as their own pronoun, and major dictionaries accept both uses.

Who acts: gender, people, major dictionaries · What happens: be, use, accept · To what, where: speakers, gender, uses

This is a sentence of the lesson «Pronouns: I, me, you, they and who» 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 (gender, people, major 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	Singular	singular	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 they	amod
2	"	"	PUNCT	_	3 they	punct
3	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 used	nsubj:pass
4	"	"	PUNCT	_	3 they	punct
5	for	for	ADP	_	7 person	case
6	one	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	7 person	nummod
7	person	person	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 they	nmod
8	whose	whose	PRON	Poss=Yes PronType=Rel	9 gender	nmod:poss
9	gender	gender	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 unknown	nsubj
10	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 unknown	cop
11	unknown	unknown	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 person	acl:relcl
12	has	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	14 used	aux
13	been	be	AUX	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	14 used	aux:pass
14	used	use	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
15	since	since	ADP	_	17 1300s	case
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 1300s	det
17	1300s	1300	NOUN	Number=Ptan NumForm=Combi NumType=Card	14 used	obl
18	;	;	PUNCT	_	23 use	punct
19	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	20 people	det
20	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 use	nsubj
21	today	today	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 people	obl:unmarked
22	also	also	ADV	_	23 use	advmod
23	use	use	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	14 used	parataxis
24	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 use	obj
25	as	as	ADP	_	28 pronoun	case
26	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	28 pronoun	nmod:poss
27	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 pronoun	amod
28	pronoun	pronoun	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 use	obl
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 accept	punct
30	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 accept	cc
31	major	major	ADJ	Degree=Pos	32 dictionaries	amod
32	dictionaries	dictionary	NOUN	Number=Plur	33 accept	nsubj
33	accept	accept	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	23 use	conj
34	both	both	DET	PronType=Tot	35 uses	det
35	uses	use	NOUN	Number=Plur	33 accept	obj
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	14 used	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: kept the draft

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is	present	gender			unknown property	tree rules
2	use	present · perfect · passive		speakers = speaker	since the 1300s		vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient
3	use	present	some people	gender		as speakers's own pronoun	vn spend_time-104 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Agent it=Duration as pronoun=Attribute
4	accept	present	major dictionaries	both uses			vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent use=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:005-pronouns-i-me-you-they-and-who.lesson:16.

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): 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/5-pronouns-i-me-you-they-and-who/16/