---
title: «ow» can say /ow/ as in «cow» or /oa/ as in «snow»; the sentence tel… — Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosing the spe… · tree and pragmatics
description: «ow» can say /ow/ as in «cow» or /oa/ as in «snow»; the sentence tells you which. Who acts: ow, sentence. A sentence of the lesson «Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosing the spelling» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosing the spelling, sentence 19

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«ow» can say /ow/ as in «cow» or /oa/ as in «snow»; the sentence tells you which.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** ow, sentence · **What happens:** say, tell · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosing the spelling» 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 (ow, sentence), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:004-vowel-teams-split-digraphs-and-choosing-the-spelling.lesson:19
# text = «ow» can say /ow/ as in «cow» or /oa/ as in «snow»; the sentence tells you which.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 004-vowel-teams-split-digraphs-and-choosing-the-spelling.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): R6-punct-agree ×3
1	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	ow	ow	X	GW	_	5	nsubj	_	_
3	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	/	/	SYM	SYM	_	7	punct	_	_
7	ow	ow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
8	/	/	SYM	SYM	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=12:punct
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
12	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
13	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=16:punct
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	/	/	SYM	SYM	_	16	punct	_	_
16	oa	oa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	appos	_	_
17	/	/	SYM	SYM	_	16	punct	_	_
18	as	as	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	_
21	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
22	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	21	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=16:punct
23	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	sentence	sentence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	nsubj	_	_
26	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
27	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	26	iobj	_	_
28	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	26	obj	_	_
29	.	.	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | can | ow |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | the sentence |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient which=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:english:004-vowel-teams-split-digraphs-and-choosing-the-spelling.lesson:19`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×3. **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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- next →: [Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosi…, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/4-vowel-teams-split-digraphs-and-choosing-the-spelling/20/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/4-vowel-teams-split-digraphs-and-choosing-the-spelling/)