---
title: Tiktaalik was a 375-million-year-old fish with a neck, lungs and str… — How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber a… · tree and pragmatics
description: Tiktaalik was a 375-million-year-old fish with a neck, lungs and strong leg-like fins; scientists guessed which age of rock it should be in, searched, and found it in the Canadian Arctic. Who acts: Tiktaalik, old fish, fish. A sentence of the lesson «How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber an
---

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# How old is it? Rock layers, rock clocks, amber and the long story of life, sentence 14

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Tiktaalik was a 375-million-year-old fish with a neck, lungs and strong leg-like fins; scientists guessed which age of rock it should be in, searched, and found it in the Canadian Arctic.

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**Who acts:** Tiktaalik, old fish, fish · **What happens:** be, guess, search, find · **To what, where:** old fish, age, fish, Canadian Arctic

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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 (Tiktaalik, old fish, fish), 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:14
# text = Tiktaalik was a 375-million-year-old fish with a neck, lungs and strong leg-like fins; scientists guessed which age of rock it should be in, searched, and found it in the Canadian Arctic.
# 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, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Tiktaalik	Tiktaalik	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
4	375	375	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	_
6	million	million	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:compound
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	_
8	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nsubj	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	lungs	lung	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=11:appos
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
18	strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
19	leg	leg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	compound	_	_
20	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	19	punct	_	_
21	like	like	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	fins	fin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	_
23	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
24	scientists	scientist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	nsubj	_	_
25	guessed	guess	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
26	which	which	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	27	det	_	_
27	age	age	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obj	_	_
28	of	of	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
29	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nmod	_	_
30	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	33	nsubj	_	_
31	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	33	aux	_	_
32	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	33	cop	_	_
33	in	in	ADV	RB	_	27	acl:relcl	_	_
34	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	35	punct	_	_
35	searched	search	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	25	conj	_	_
36	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	38	punct	_	_
37	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	38	cc	_	_
38	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	25	conj	_	_
39	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	38	obj	_	_
40	in	in	ADP	IN	_	43	case	_	_
41	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	43	det	_	_
42	Canadian	Canadian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	43	amod	_	_
43	Arctic	Arctic	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	38	obl	_	_
44	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=25:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Tiktaalik | a old fish |  |  |  | with a neck and lungs and strong like fins | tree rules |
| 2 | **guess** | past | a old fish | which age of rock |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent age=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | should | fish | which age of rock *not said here* |  |  |  | in *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **search** | participle | a old fish *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn search-35.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **find** | past | a old fish *not said here* | fish |  | the Canadian Arctic |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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:14`.

**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, R7-rel-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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