---
title: «The teachers were happy» needs no apostrophe; «the teacher's desk»… — Spelling plurals: -s, -es, -ies, -ves and odd ones · tree and pragmatics
description: «The teachers were happy» needs no apostrophe; «the teacher's desk» means the desk of one teacher. Who acts: teachers, desk. A sentence of the lesson «Spelling plurals: -s, -es, -ies, -ves and odd ones» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of eve
---

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# Spelling plurals: -s, -es, -ies, -ves and odd ones, sentence 15

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«The teachers were happy» needs no apostrophe; «the teacher's desk» means the desk of one teacher.

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**Who acts:** teachers, desk · **What happens:** be, need, mean · **To what, where:** apostrophe, desk · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Spelling plurals: -s, -es, -ies, -ves and odd ones» 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 (teachers, desk), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:006-spelling-plurals.lesson:15
# text = «The teachers were happy» needs no apostrophe; «the teacher's desk» means the desk of one teacher.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 006-spelling-plurals.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): R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	teachers	teacher	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	csubj	_	_
6	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
7	needs	need	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	9	det	_	_
9	apostrophe	apostrophe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
11	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	teacher	teacher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod:poss	_	_
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	desk	desk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=17:obl
16	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=15:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:,:_
17	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:conj
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	desk	desk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	22	nummod	_	_
22	teacher	teacher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past | the teachers |  |  |  |  | happy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **need** | present |  | no apostrophe |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot apostrophe=Theme |
| 3 | **mean** | present | the teacher's desk | the desk of one teacher |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent desk=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:006-spelling-plurals.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): R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-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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