---
title: The plates are always moving, very slowly, about as fast as your fin… — Plate tectonics · tree and pragmatics
description: The plates are always moving, very slowly, about as fast as your fingernails grow, carried on the slowly flowing mantle below. Who acts: plates, fingernails. A sentence of the lesson «Plate tectonics» of the geography course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of eve
---

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# Plate tectonics, sentence 1

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The plates are always moving, very slowly, about as fast as your fingernails grow, carried on the slowly flowing mantle below.

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**Who acts:** plates, fingernails · **What happens:** move, grow, carry, flow · **To what, where:** flowing mantle

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Plate tectonics» 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 (plates, fingernails), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:042-plate-tectonics.lesson:1
# text = The plates are always moving, very slowly, about as fast as your fingernails grow, carried on the slowly flowing mantle below.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 042-plate-tectonics.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): no change
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	plates	plate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	5	advmod	_	_
5	moving	move	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	about	about	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	as	as	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
13	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
14	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	fingernails	fingernail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	grow	grow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
18	carried	carry	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	advcl	_	_
19	on	on	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
21	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	flowing	flow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	23	amod	_	_
23	mantle	mantle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
24	below	below	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **move** | present · progressive | the plates |  |  |  |  | always, fast, slowly *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **grow** | present | your fingernails |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **carry** | participle | the plates *not said here* |  |  | the flowing mantle |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **flow** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | slowly *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:042-plate-tectonics.lesson:1`.

**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): no change. **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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