---
title: A fossil is a message from a living thing that died long ago, usuall… — Fossils · tree and pragmatics
description: A fossil is a message from a living thing that died long ago, usually more than 10,000 years ago. Who acts: fossil, living thing. A sentence of the lesson «Fossils» of the geography course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fossils, sentence 0

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A fossil is a message from a living thing that died long ago, usually more than 10,000 years ago.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** fossil, living thing · **What happens:** be, die · **To what, where:** message, living thing

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Fossils» 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 (fossil, living thing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:057-fossils.lesson:0
# text = A fossil is a message from a living thing that died long ago, usually more than 10,000 years ago.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 057-fossils.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 ×2
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	fossil	fossil	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	message	message	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	living	living	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
11	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	_
12	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	_
13	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	18	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:conj
17	than	than	ADP	IN	_	16	fixed	_	_
18	10,000	10,000	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl:unmarked	_	_
20	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:advmod
21	.	.	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 a** | present | a fossil | a message |  | a living thing |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **die** | past | a living thing |  |  |  |  | ago *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

<!-- .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:057-fossils.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 ×2. **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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