---
title: Commas around a relative clause can change the meaning of a sentence. — Relative clauses · tree and pragmatics
description: Commas around a relative clause can change the meaning of a sentence. Who acts: Commas. A sentence of the lesson «Relative clauses» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Relative clauses, sentence 20

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Commas around a relative clause can change the meaning of a sentence.

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**Who acts:** Commas · **What happens:** change, mean · **To what, where:** meaning, sentence

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Relative clauses» 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 (Commas), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:030-relative-clauses.lesson:20
# text = Commas around a relative clause can change the meaning of a sentence.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 030-relative-clauses.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	Commas	comma	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
2	around	around	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	relative	relative	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	clause	clause	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	nmod	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	change	change	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	meaning	meaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	sentence	sentence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | **change** | can | Commas around a relative clause | the meaning of a sentence |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent meaning=Patient |
| 2 | **mean** |  |  | a sentence |  |  |  |  | nom meaning «communication transitive»: of=patient |

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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:030-relative-clauses.lesson:20`.

**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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