---
title: Most fossils form when a dead animal or plant is buried quickly in m… — Fossils · tree and pragmatics
description: Most fossils form when a dead animal or plant is buried quickly in mud or sand, before it rots or gets eaten. Who acts: Most fossils, fossil. 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 2

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Most fossils form when a dead animal or plant is buried quickly in mud or sand, before it rots or gets eaten.

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**Who acts:** Most fossils, fossil · **What happens:** form, bury, rot, eat · **To what, where:** dead animal, mud

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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 (Most fossils, fossil), 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:2
# text = Most fossils form when a dead animal or plant is buried quickly in mud or sand, before it rots or gets eaten.
# 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): R1-cc-next ×3, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	amod	_	_
2	fossils	fossil	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	form	form	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	11	mark	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	animal	animal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=7:cc
9	plant	plant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	buried	bury	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	_
12	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	mud	mud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=14:cc
16	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	conj	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
18	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	rots	rot	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
21	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=20:cc
22	gets	get	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	23	aux:pass	_	_
23	eaten	eat	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	20	conj	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=11:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **form** | present | Most fossils |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **bury** | present · passive |  | a dead animal or plant |  | mud or sand |  | quickly *property* | vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme in mud=Destination |
| 3 | **rot** | present | fossil |  |  |  |  |  | vn entity\_specific\_cos-45.5 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **eat** | present · passive | fossil *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V» |

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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:057-fossils.lesson:2`.

**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 ×3, R6-punct-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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