---
title: French colours sit behind the thing they describe, so a red ball is… — Colours · tree and pragmatics
description: French colours sit behind the thing they describe, so a red ball is un ballon rouge, "a ball red", like a label stuck on after the name. Who acts: French colours, colours, red ball. A sentence of the lesson «Colours» of the french course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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# Colours, sentence 0

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
French colours sit behind the thing they describe, so a red ball is un ballon rouge, "a ball red", like a label stuck on after the name.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** French colours, colours, red ball · **What happens:** sit, describe, be, stick on · **To what, where:** thing, ballon rouge, label

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Colours» 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 (French colours, colours, red ball), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:french:009-colours.lesson:0
# text = French colours sit behind the thing they describe, so a red ball is un ballon rouge, "a ball red", like a label stuck on after the name.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = french
# lesson = 009-colours.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 ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	French	French	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	colours	colour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sit	sit	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	describe	describe	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
10	so	so	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
15	un	un	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	_
16	ballon	ballon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	rouge	rouge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	22	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=17:punct
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	_
22	red	red	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	22	punct	_	_
24	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
25	like	like	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	label	label	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
28	stuck	stick	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	27	acl	_	_
29	on	on	ADP	RP	_	28	compound:prt	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=32:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
30	after	after	ADP	IN	_	32	case	_	_
31	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	32	det	_	_
32	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	obl	_	_
33	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **sit** | present | French colours |  |  | the thing |  | like a label | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent behind thing=Location |
| 2 | **describe** | present | colours *= colour* | the thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent thing=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | present | a red ball | ballon rouge |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **stick on** | participle |  | a label *not said here* |  |  | after the name |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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:009-colours.lesson:0`.

**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 ×1, R6-punct-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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