---
title: Because so few living things are buried just right, only a tiny frac… — Fossils · tree and pragmatics
description: Because so few living things are buried just right, only a tiny fraction ever become fossils. Who acts: tiny fraction. 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 6

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Because so few living things are buried just right, only a tiny fraction ever become fossils.

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**Who acts:** tiny fraction · **What happens:** bury, become · **To what, where:** few living things, fossils

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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 (tiny fraction), 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:6
# text = Because so few living things are buried just right, only a tiny fraction ever become fossils.
# 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, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
2	so	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	living	living	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	buried	bury	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	16	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=0:root
8	just	just	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	right	right	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	only	only	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	fraction	fraction	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
15	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	16	advmod	_	_
16	become	become	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:conj
17	fossils	fossil	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	xcomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:obj
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7: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 | **bury** | present · passive |  | few living things |  |  |  | right *property* | vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **become** | present | a tiny fraction | fossils |  |  | ever |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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:6`.

**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, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-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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