---
title: In history, soap was made by boiling fat with lye from wood ash; the… — Soap and why washing works · tree and pragmatics
description: In history, soap was made by boiling fat with lye from wood ash; the alkali breaks fats into soap, and lye is very caustic. Who acts: boiling fat, alkali, lye. A sentence of the lesson «Soap and why washing works» of the chemistry course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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# Soap and why washing works, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In history, soap was made by boiling fat with lye from wood ash; the alkali breaks fats into soap, and lye is very caustic.

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**Who acts:** boiling fat, alkali, lye · **What happens:** make, break, be · **To what, where:** soap, history, fats

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soap and why washing works» of the chemistry 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 (boiling fat, alkali, lye), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:chemistry:024-soap-and-why-washing-works.lesson:15
# text = In history, soap was made by boiling fat with lye from wood ash; the alkali breaks fats into soap, and lye is very caustic.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = chemistry
# lesson = 024-soap-and-why-washing-works.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): no change
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	history	history	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	soap	soap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	made	make	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	boiling	boiling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	fat	fat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	lye	lye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
12	from	from	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	ash	ash	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	alkali	alkali	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	breaks	break	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
19	fats	fat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obj	_	_
20	into	into	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	soap	soap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
24	lye	lye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nsubj	_	_
25	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
26	very	very	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
27	caustic	caustic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | past · passive | boiling fat with lye from wood ash | soap |  | history |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset subject=Product |
| 2 | **break** | present | the alkali | fats |  |  |  | into soap *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent fat=Patient into soap=Result |
| 3 | **is** | present | lye |  |  |  |  | caustic *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:chemistry:024-soap-and-why-washing-works.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): 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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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