---
title: The oldest fossils are about 3.5 billion years old: stromatolites, m… — How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber a… · tree and pragmatics
description: The oldest fossils are about 3.5 billion years old: stromatolites, mounds built by tiny microbes; living stromatolites still grow at Shark Bay in Australia. Who acts: oldest fossils, living stromatolites. A sentence of the lesson «How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of 
---

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# How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of life, sentence 10

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The oldest fossils are about 3.5 billion years old: stromatolites, mounds built by tiny microbes; living stromatolites still grow at Shark Bay in Australia.

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**Who acts:** oldest fossils, living stromatolites · **What happens:** be, build, live, grow · **To what, where:** stromatolites, Shark Bay

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of life» of the biology 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 (oldest fossils, living stromatolites), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life.lesson:10
# text = The oldest fossils are about 3.5 billion years old: stromatolites, mounds built by tiny microbes; living stromatolites still grow at Shark Bay in Australia.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life.lesson
# annotation = 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, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	oldest	old	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	3	amod	_	_
3	fossils	fossil	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
5	about	about	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=8:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
6	3.5	3.5	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	7	compound	_	_
7	billion	billion	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
11	stromatolites	stromatolite	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	mounds	mound	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	conj	_	_
14	built	build	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
15	by	by	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	microbes	microbe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
18	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
19	living	live	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	20	amod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=20:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:_
20	stromatolites	stromatolite	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	nsubj	_	_
21	still	still	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	grow	grow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	parataxis	_	_
23	at	at	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	Shark	Shark	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	25	compound	_	_
25	Bay	Bay	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	_
26	in	in	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
27	Australia	Australia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	25	nmod	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the oldest fossils |  |  |  | year | old *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **build** | participle |  | stromatolites and mounds *not said here* |  |  |  | by tiny microbes | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **live** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **grow** | present | living stromatolites |  |  | Shark Bay in Australia | still |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at bay=Location |

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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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/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:biology:276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life.lesson:10`.

**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, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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