---
title: Before railways each town kept its own local time from the Sun, and… — Time zones and the date line · tree and pragmatics
description: Before railways each town kept its own local time from the Sun, and British railways began using London time in the 1840s, with the law following in 1880. Who acts: town, British railways, law. A sentence of the lesson «Time zones and the date line» of the geography course of Mova's primary school w
---

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# Time zones and the date line, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Before railways each town kept its own local time from the Sun, and British railways began using London time in the 1840s, with the law following in 1880.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** town, British railways, law · **What happens:** keep, begin, use, follow · **To what, where:** Sun, 1840s, 1880

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Time zones and the date line» 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 (town, British railways, law), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:004-time-zones-and-the-date-line.lesson:7
# text = Before railways each town kept its own local time from the Sun, and British railways began using London time in the 1840s, with the law following in 1880.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 004-time-zones-and-the-date-line.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
1	Before	before	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	railways	railway	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
3	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	4	det	_	_
4	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
7	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	local	local	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
10	from	from	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Sun	Sun	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=9:nmod
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	railways	railway	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
18	using	use	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	17	xcomp	_	_
19	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	_
20	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	in	in	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	1840s	1840s	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan|NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	18	obl	_	_
24	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
25	with	with	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	law	law	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
28	following	follow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	27	acl	_	_
29	in	in	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
30	1880	1880	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	28	obl	_	_
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 | **keep** | past | each town |  |  | the Sun | before railways; time |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent before railway=Location |
| 2 | **begin** | past | British railways |  |  |  |  | with the law | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **use** | gerund | British railways *not said here* |  |  | the 1840s | time |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **follow** | gerund | the law *not said here* |  |  | 1880 |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in 1880=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:004-time-zones-and-the-date-line.lesson:7`.

**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. **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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