Saturn and its rings, sentence 3

That is why, when the rings turn edge-on to us every 13 to 16 years, they almost vanish, as they did in March 2025, like a sheet of paper seen from the side.

Who acts: That, rings · What happens: be, turn, vanish, see · To what, where: sheet, side

This is a sentence of the lesson «Saturn and its rings» of the space 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 (That, rings), 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	That	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	3 why	nsubj
2	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 why	cop
3	why	why	ADV	PronType=Rel	root	root
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 turn	punct
5	when	when	SCONJ	_	8 turn	mark
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 rings	det
7	rings	ring	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 turn	nsubj
8	turn	turn	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	22 vanish	advcl
9	edge	edge	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 on	compound
10	-	-	PUNCT	_	9 edge	punct
11	on	on	ADP	_	13 us	case
12	to	to	ADP	_	13 us	case
13	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	8 turn	obl
14	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	18 years	det
15	13	13	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	18 years	nummod
16	to	to	ADP	_	17 16	case
17	16	16	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	15 13	nmod
18	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 turn	obl:unmarked
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 vanish	punct
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 vanish	nsubj
21	almost	almost	ADV	_	22 vanish	advmod
22	vanish	vanish	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 why	parataxis
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 did	punct
24	as	as	SCONJ	_	26 did	mark
25	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	26 did	nsubj
26	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	22 vanish	advcl
27	in	in	ADP	_	28 March	case
28	March	March	PROPN	Number=Sing	26 did	obl
29	2025	2025	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	28 March	nmod:unmarked
30	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 sheet	punct
31	like	like	ADP	_	33 sheet	case
32	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	33 sheet	det
33	sheet	sheet	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 vanish	obl
34	of	of	ADP	_	35 paper	case
35	paper	paper	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 sheet	nmod
36	seen	see	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	33 sheet	acl
37	from	from	ADP	_	39 side	case
38	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	39 side	det
39	side	side	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 seen	obl
40	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 why	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	present	That				why property	tree rules
2	turn	present	the rings			year	on us	vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme on we=Trajectory
3	vanish	present	rings = ring				like a sheet of paper; almost property	vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
4	see	participle		a sheet of paper not said here	the side			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer

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:space:012-saturn-and-its-rings.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): R5-strong ×2. 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/space/12-saturn-and-its-rings/3/