Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 20

In 1088 in China, Su Song built a water-powered clock tower over 10 metres high that also showed the movement of the stars; that was 938 years before 2026.

Who acts: Su Song, powered clock tower, that · What happens: build, power, show, be, move · To what, where: powered clock tower, 1088, movement, 938 years, stars

This is a sentence of the lesson «Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses» of the world 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 (Su Song, powered clock tower, that), 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	In	in	ADP	_	2 1088	case
2	1088	1088	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	8 built	obl
3	in	in	ADP	_	4 China	case
4	China	China	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 1088	nmod
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 1088	punct
6	Su	Su	PROPN	Number=Sing	7 Song	compound
7	Song	song	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 built	nsubj
8	built	build	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 tower	det
10	water	water	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 powered	compound
11	-	-	PUNCT	_	10 water	punct
12	powered	power	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	14 tower	amod
13	clock	clock	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 tower	compound
14	tower	tower	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 built	obj
15	over	over	ADV	_	16 10	advmod
16	10	10	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	17 metres	nummod
17	metres	metre	NOUN	Number=Plur	14 tower	nmod:unmarked
18	high	high	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 metres	amod
19	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	21 showed	nsubj
20	also	also	ADV	_	21 showed	advmod
21	showed	show	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 tower	acl:relcl
22	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	23 movement	det
23	movement	movement	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 showed	obj
24	of	of	ADP	_	26 stars	case
25	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	26 stars	det
26	stars	star	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 movement	nmod
27	;	;	PUNCT	_	8 built	punct
28	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	31 years	nsubj
29	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 years	cop
30	938	938	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	31 years	nummod
31	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 built	parataxis
32	before	before	ADP	_	33 2026	case
33	2026	2026	NUM	NumForm=Digit NumType=Card	31 years	nmod
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 built	punct

Pragmatics

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

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	roles by
1	build	past	Su Song	a powered clock tower 10 metres	1088 in China		vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset tower=Product
2	power	participle					tree rules
3	show	past	a powered clock tower 10 metres	the movement of the stars			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent movement=Recipient
4	is a	past	that	938 years		before 2026	tree rules
5	move			the stars			nom movement «act transitive»: of=patient

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:world:122-clocks-before-clocks.lesson:20.

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): no change. 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/world/122-clocks-before-clocks/20/