---
title: A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from lo… — Fossils · tree and pragmatics
description: A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from long ago, usually over 10,000 years old. Who acts: 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 8

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A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from long ago, usually over 10,000 years old.

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**Who acts:** fossil · **What happens:** preserve, be, live · **To what, where:** preserved remains

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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), 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:8
# text = A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from long ago, usually over 10,000 years old.
# 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 ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	fossil	fossil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	preserved	preserve	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	amod	_	_
6	remains	remains	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	0	root	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	trace	trace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	living	live	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	amod	_	_
12	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
13	from	from	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	15	advmod	_	_
15	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	12	nmod	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
18	over	over	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=21:advmod
19	10,000	10000	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	20	nummod	_	_
20	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	obl:unmarked	_	_
21	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | **preserve** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn defend-72.3 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | a fossil | the preserved remains or trace of a living thing |  |  |  | old, usually *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **live** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:8`.

**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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