---
title: These lands are mostly dry, so people built cities where water is: o… — The Middle East and Central Asia · tree and pragmatics
description: These lands are mostly dry, so people built cities where water is: on rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates, and at oases along the old Silk Road. Who acts: lands, people, water. A sentence of the lesson «The Middle East and Central Asia» of the geography course of Mova's primary school with its depe
---

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# The Middle East and Central Asia, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
These lands are mostly dry, so people built cities where water is: on rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates, and at oases along the old Silk Road.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** lands, people, water · **What happens:** be, build · **To what, where:** cities, rivers

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Middle East and Central Asia» of the geography 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 (lands, people, water), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:012-middle-east-and-central-asia.lesson:2
# text = These lands are mostly dry, so people built cities where water is: on rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates, and at oases along the old Silk Road.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 012-middle-east-and-central-asia.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 ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	These	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	lands	land	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	mostly	mostly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	built	build	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:conj
10	cities	city	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
11	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	13	advmod	_	_
12	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=13:punct
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	rivers	river	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	_
17	like	like	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	Tigris	Tigris	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	Euphrates	Euphrates	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
24	at	at	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	oases	oasis	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	_
26	along	along	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
27	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	30	det	_	_
28	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	30	amod	_	_
29	Silk	Silk	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	30	compound	_	_
30	Road	Road	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	25	nmod	_	_
31	.	.	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 | **is** | present | this lands |  |  |  |  | dry, mostly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **build** | past | people | cities |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent city=Product |
| 3 | **be** | present | water |  |  | rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates and oases along the old Silk Road |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on river=Location |

<!-- .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:geography:012-middle-east-and-central-asia.lesson:2`.

**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 ×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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- next →: [The Middle East and Central Asia, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/12-middle-east-and-central-asia/3/)
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