Lucky socks and Grandma's superstitions, sentence 15
A rule that explains every result, good or bad, can never be wrong, so it tells you nothing; inventing a new excuse each time it fails is called moving the goalposts.
Who acts: rule, inventing · What happens: explain, not be, tell, invent, fail, call · To what, where: result, nothing, you, new excuse, goalposts · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Lucky socks and Grandma's superstitions» 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 (rule, inventing), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 2 rule | det |
| 2 | rule | rule | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 wrong | nsubj |
| 3 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 4 explains | nsubj |
| 4 | explains | explain | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 rule | acl:relcl |
| 5 | every | every | DET | PronType=Tot | 6 result | det |
| 6 | result | result | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 explains | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 good | punct |
| 8 | good | good | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 result | amod |
| 9 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 10 bad | cc |
| 10 | bad | bad | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 good | conj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 wrong | punct |
| 12 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 15 wrong | aux |
| 13 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 15 wrong | advmod |
| 14 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 15 wrong | cop |
| 15 | wrong | wrong | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 tells | parataxis |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 wrong | punct |
| 17 | so | so | ADV | _ | 19 tells | advmod |
| 18 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 19 tells | nsubj |
| 19 | tells | tell | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 20 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 19 tells | iobj |
| 21 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 19 tells | obj |
| 22 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 23 inventing | punct |
| 23 | inventing | invent | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 32 called | csubj |
| 24 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 26 excuse | det |
| 25 | new | new | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 excuse | amod |
| 26 | excuse | excuse | NOUN | Number=Sing | 23 inventing | obj |
| 27 | each | each | DET | PronType=Tot | 28 time | det |
| 28 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 fails | obl:unmarked |
| 29 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 30 fails | nsubj |
| 30 | fails | fail | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 excuse | acl:relcl |
| 31 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 32 called | aux:pass |
| 32 | called | call | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 19 tells | parataxis |
| 33 | moving | move | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 32 called | xcomp |
| 34 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 35 goalposts | det |
| 35 | goalposts | goalpost | NOUN | Number=Plur | 33 moving | obj |
| 36 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 15 wrong | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | explain speech: assert | present | a rule | every result | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent result=Topic | ||||
| 2 | not is | can | a rule | wrong property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | tell speech: assert | present | rule | nothing | you | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient nothing=Topic | |||
| 4 | invent | gerund | a new excuse | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent excuse=Result | |||||
| 5 | fail | present | rule | a new excuse not said here | time | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent excuse=Eventuality | |||
| 6 | call speech: assert | present · passive | inventing | vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: clause=Topic | |||||
| 7 | move | gerund | inventing not said here | the goalposts | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent goalpost=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:world:161-lucky-socks-and-grandmas-superstitions.lesson:15.
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 ×1, R6-punct-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/world/161-lucky-socks-and-grandmas-superstitions/15/