Rivers, canals and boats: locks, weirs, water-mills, barges and how not to tip a rowing boat, sentence 4
Canals cannot run uphill, so engineers built locks: boxes of water with gates at each end that lift a boat up or let it down like a water lift, with no pump at all, only water flowing downhill.
Who acts: Canals, engineers, gates, water · What happens: not run, build, lift up, let down, flow · To what, where: locks, boat, canal
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 (Canals, engineers, gates, water), 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 | Canals | canal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 run | nsubj |
| 2 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 4 run | aux |
| 3 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 4 run | advmod |
| 4 | run | run | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 5 | uphill | uphill | ADV | _ | 4 run | advmod |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 locks | punct |
| 7 | so | so | ADV | _ | 9 built | advmod |
| 8 | engineers | engineer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 built | nsubj |
| 9 | built | build | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 run | parataxis |
| 10 | locks | lock | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 built | obj |
| 11 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 12 boxes | punct |
| 12 | boxes | box | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 locks | appos |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 water | case |
| 14 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 boxes | nmod |
| 15 | with | with | ADP | _ | 16 gates | case |
| 16 | gates | gate | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 boxes | nmod |
| 17 | at | at | ADP | _ | 19 end | case |
| 18 | each | each | DET | PronType=Tot | 19 end | det |
| 19 | end | end | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 gates | nmod |
| 20 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 21 lift | nsubj |
| 21 | lift | lift | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 gates | acl:relcl |
| 22 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 23 boat | det |
| 23 | boat | boat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 lift | obj |
| 24 | up | up | ADP | _ | 21 lift | compound:prt |
| 25 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 26 let | cc |
| 26 | let | let | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 21 lift | conj |
| 27 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 26 let | obj |
| 28 | down | down | ADP | _ | 26 let | compound:prt |
| 29 | like | like | ADP | _ | 32 lift | case |
| 30 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 32 lift | det |
| 31 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 lift | compound |
| 32 | lift | lift | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 let | obl |
| 33 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 36 pump | punct |
| 34 | with | with | ADP | _ | 36 pump | case |
| 35 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 36 pump | det |
| 36 | pump | pump | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 run | parataxis |
| 37 | at | at | ADP | _ | 38 all | case |
| 38 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 36 pump | nmod |
| 39 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 41 water | punct |
| 40 | only | only | ADV | _ | 41 water | advmod |
| 41 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 36 pump | conj |
| 42 | flowing | flow | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 41 water | acl |
| 43 | downhill | downhill | ADV | _ | 42 flowing | advmod |
| 44 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 run | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not run | can | Canals | uphill property | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | build | past | engineers | locks | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset lock=Product | ||||
| 3 | lift up | present | gates at each end | a boat | vn put_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boat=Theme | ||||
| 4 | let down | present | gates at each end not said here | canal | like a water lift | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme | |||
| 5 | flow | gerund | water not said here | downhill property | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=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:4.
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, R7-rel-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/technology/41-rivers-canals-and-boats-locks-weirs-water-mills-barges-and-how-not-to-tip-a-rowing-boat/4/