---
title: Est-ce que at the start turns a sentence into a yes or no question;… — Questions and simple sentences · tree and pragmatics
description: Est-ce que at the start turns a sentence into a yes or no question; it sounds "ess-kuh". Who acts: Est ce que, question. A sentence of the lesson «Questions and simple sentences» of the french course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Questions and simple sentences, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Est-ce que at the start turns a sentence into a yes or no question; it sounds "ess-kuh".

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**Who acts:** Est ce que, question · **What happens:** turn, sound · **To what, where:** sentence, question, ess kuh

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Questions and simple sentences» of the french 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 (Est ce que, question), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:french:030-questions-and-simple-sentences.lesson:6
# text = Est-ce que at the start turns a sentence into a yes or no question; it sounds "ess-kuh".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = french
# lesson = 030-questions-and-simple-sentences.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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Est	Est	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=1:punct
3	ce	ce	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	que	que	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	start	start	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
8	turns	turn	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	sentence	sentence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	into	into	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
13	yes	yes	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Pos	16	discourse	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	13	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:det
16	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:nmod
17	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	sounds	sound	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:conj
20	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	23	punct	_	_
21	ess	ess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	compound	_	_
22	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	21	punct	_	_
23	kuh	kuh	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	xcomp	_	_
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	23	punct	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | present | Est ce que at the start | a sentence |  | a question |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent sentence=Theme into question=Trajectory |
| 2 | **sound** | present | question | ess kuh |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

<!-- .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:french:030-questions-and-simple-sentences.lesson:6`.

**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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×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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