---
title: Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Portugal handed M… — How empires fell: the map of the 20th century · tree and pragmatics
description: Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Portugal handed Macau back in 1999, among the last pieces of the old European empires in Asia. Who acts: Britain, Portugal. A sentence of the lesson «How empires fell: the map of the 20th century» of the geography course of Mova's primary school wit
---

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# How empires fell: the map of the 20th century, sentence 17

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Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Portugal handed Macau back in 1999, among the last pieces of the old European empires in Asia.

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**Who acts:** Britain, Portugal · **What happens:** hand back · **To what, where:** Hong, China, 1997, Macau, 1999

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How empires fell: the map of the 20th century» 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 (Britain, Portugal), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:037-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century.lesson:17
# text = Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Portugal handed Macau back in 1999, among the last pieces of the old European empires in Asia.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 037-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century.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): R1-cc-next ×1
1	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	handed	hand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	Hong	Hong	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
4	Kong	Kong	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	flat	_	_
5	back	back	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	China	China	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	1997	1997	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	2	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=2:cc
11	Portugal	Portugal	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	handed	hand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	Macau	Macau	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
14	back	back	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	1999	1999	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	12	obl	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
18	among	among	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
24	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
25	European	European	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
26	empires	empire	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	nmod	_	_
27	in	in	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
28	Asia	Asia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	26	nmod	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **hand back** | past | Britain | Hong | China | 1997 |  |  | vn send-11.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent hong=Theme to china=Destination |
| 2 | **hand back** | past | Portugal | Macau |  | 1999 |  | among the last pieces of the old European empires in Asia | vn send-11.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent macau=Theme |

<!-- .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:037-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century.lesson:17`.

**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): R1-cc-next ×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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