---
title: A phoneme is one sound in a word; a grapheme is the letter or letter… — Sounds and letters: how phonics starts · tree and pragmatics
description: A phoneme is one sound in a word; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write that sound. Who acts: phoneme, grapheme, letter. A sentence of the lesson «Sounds and letters: how phonics starts» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clau
---

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# Sounds and letters: how phonics starts, sentence 17

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A phoneme is one sound in a word; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write that sound.

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**Who acts:** phoneme, grapheme, letter · **What happens:** be, write · **To what, where:** one sound, word, letter, sound

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Sounds and letters: how phonics starts» of the english 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 (phoneme, grapheme, letter), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:001-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts.lesson:17
# text = A phoneme is one sound in a word; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write that sound.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 001-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts.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
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	phoneme	phoneme	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	grapheme	grapheme	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:conj
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	letters	letter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	_
17	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	nsubj	_	_
18	write	write	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	acl:relcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:acl:relcl
19	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	20	det	_	_
20	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a phoneme | one sound |  | a word |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | present | a grapheme | the letter or letters |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **write** | present | the letter or letters | that sound |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sound=Theme |

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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:english:001-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts.lesson:17`.

**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. **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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