---
title: A desert is a place where very little rain or snow falls, usually le… — Deserts · tree and pragmatics
description: A desert is a place where very little rain or snow falls, usually less than about 250 mm a year, so a desert does not have to be hot or sandy: icy Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth. Who acts: desert, little rain, icy Antarctica. A sentence of the lesson «Deserts» of the geography course of M
---

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# Deserts, sentence 0

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A desert is a place where very little rain or snow falls, usually less than about 250 mm a year, so a desert does not have to be hot or sandy: icy Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth.

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**Who acts:** desert, little rain, icy Antarctica · **What happens:** be, fall, not have · **To what, where:** place, biggest desert, Earth

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Deserts» 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 (desert, little rain, icy Antarctica), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:018-deserts.lesson:0
# text = A desert is a place where very little rain or snow falls, usually less than about 250 mm a year, so a desert does not have to be hot or sandy: icy Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 018-deserts.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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	12	advmod	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
10	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
12	falls	fall	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	less	less	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	12	advcl	_	_
16	than	than	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	250	250	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	mm	mm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=15:obl|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod:unmarked	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	28	punct	_	_
23	so	so	ADV	RB	_	28	advmod	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	nsubj	_	_
26	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	28	aux	_	_
27	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	28	advmod	_	_
28	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	parataxis	_	_
29	to	to	PART	TO	_	31	mark	_	_
30	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	31	cop	_	_
31	hot	hot	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	28	xcomp	_	_
32	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	33	cc	_	_
33	sandy	sandy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	31	conj	_	_
34	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	40	punct	_	_
35	icy	icy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	36	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=40:amod
36	Antarctica	Antarctica	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	40	nsubj	_	_
37	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	40	cop	_	_
38	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	40	det	_	_
39	biggest	big	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	40	amod	_	_
40	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	parataxis	_	_
41	on	on	ADP	IN	_	42	case	_	_
42	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	40	nmod	_	_
43	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- 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 | **is a** | present | a desert | a place |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **fall** | present | little rain or snow |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **have** | present · do-support | a desert |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | to-infinitive | a desert *not said here* |  |  |  |  | hot *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **be** |  | a desert *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 6 | **is a** | present | icy Antarctica | the biggest desert |  | Earth |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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:018-deserts.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, 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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