Rivers, canals and boats: locks, weirs, water-mills, barges and how not to tip a rowing boat, sentence 3
About 250 years ago Britain dug thousands of kilometres of canals, because a single horse walking on the towpath could pull a boat carrying far more coal than it could pull in a cart on a bumpy road.
Who acts: Britain, single horse, boat, horse · What happens: dig, walk, pull, carry · To what, where: thousands, towpath, boat, more coal, cart
This is a sentence of the lesson «Rivers, canals and boats: locks, weirs, water-mills, barges and how not to tip a rowing boat» of the technology 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 (Britain, single horse, boat, horse), 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 | About | about | ADV | _ | 2 250 | advmod |
| 2 | 250 | 250 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 3 years | nummod |
| 3 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 ago | obl:unmarked |
| 4 | ago | ago | ADV | _ | 6 dug | advmod |
| 5 | Britain | Britain | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 dug | nsubj |
| 6 | dug | dig | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | thousands | thousand | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 dug | obj |
| 8 | of | of | ADP | _ | 9 kilometres | case |
| 9 | kilometres | kilometre | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 thousands | nmod |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 canals | case |
| 11 | canals | canal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 kilometres | nmod |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 horse | punct |
| 13 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 22 pull | mark |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 horse | det |
| 15 | single | single | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 horse | amod |
| 16 | horse | horse | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 pull | nsubj |
| 17 | walking | walk | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 16 horse | acl |
| 18 | on | on | ADP | _ | 20 towpath | case |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 towpath | det |
| 20 | towpath | towpath | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 walking | obl |
| 21 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 22 pull | aux |
| 22 | pull | pull | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 dug | advcl |
| 23 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 24 boat | det |
| 24 | boat | boat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 pull | obj |
| 25 | carrying | carry | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 24 boat | acl |
| 26 | far | far | ADV | Degree=Pos | 27 more | advmod |
| 27 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 28 coal | amod |
| 28 | coal | coal | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 carrying | obj |
| 29 | than | than | SCONJ | _ | 32 pull | mark |
| 30 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 32 pull | nsubj |
| 31 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 32 pull | aux |
| 32 | pull | pull | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 28 coal | advcl |
| 33 | in | in | ADP | _ | 35 cart | case |
| 34 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 35 cart | det |
| 35 | cart | cart | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 pull | obl |
| 36 | on | on | ADP | _ | 39 road | case |
| 37 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 39 road | det |
| 38 | bumpy | bumpy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 39 road | amod |
| 39 | road | road | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 pull | obl |
| 40 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 dug | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dig | past | Britain | thousands of kilometres of canals | ago property | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent thousand=Theme | |||
| 2 | walk | gerund | a single horse not said here | the towpath | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on towpath=Trajectory | ||||
| 3 | pull | could | a single horse | a boat | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boat=Theme | ||||
| 4 | carry | gerund | a boat not said here | more coal | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent coal=Theme | ||||
| 5 | pull | could | horse | a cart | on a bumpy road | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent on road=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:technology:041-rivers-canals-and-boats-locks-weirs-water-mills-barges-and-how-not-to-tip-a-rowing-boat.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 ×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/technology/41-rivers-canals-and-boats-locks-weirs-water-mills-barges-and-how-not-to-tip-a-rowing-boat/3/