---
title: English has 26 letters but about 44 sounds, so some sounds are writt… — Sounds and letters: how phonics starts · tree and pragmatics
description: English has 26 letters but about 44 sounds, so some sounds are written with letter teams. Who acts: English. 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 clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/18/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / [Sounds and letters: how phonics starts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/) / 18

# Sounds and letters: how phonics starts, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
English has 26 letters but about 44 sounds, so some sounds are written with letter teams.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** English · **What happens:** have, write · **To what, where:** 26 letters, sounds

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (English), 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:18
# text = English has 26 letters but about 44 sounds, so some sounds are written with letter teams.
# 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): no change
1	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	26	26	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
4	letters	letter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
6	about	about	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	44	44	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	sounds	sound	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	so	so	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
11	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	12	det	_	_
12	sounds	sound	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	written	write	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	parataxis	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	teams	team	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **have** | present | English | 26 letters but 44 sounds |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=Patient |
| 2 | **write** | present · passive |  | some sounds |  |  |  | with letter teams | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:18`.

**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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Sounds and letters: how phonics starts, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/17/)
- next →: [Sounds and letters: how phonics starts, 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/19/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/)