---
title: Some atoms are radioactive and slowly change into other atoms at a s… — Deep time and the story of life · tree and pragmatics
description: Some atoms are radioactive and slowly change into other atoms at a steady rate, like sand falling through an hourglass. Who acts: atoms, sand. A sentence of the lesson «Deep time and the story of life» of the geography course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ev
---

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# Deep time and the story of life, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Some atoms are radioactive and slowly change into other atoms at a steady rate, like sand falling through an hourglass.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** atoms, sand · **What happens:** be, change, fall · **To what, where:** other atoms, hourglass

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Deep time and the story of life» 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 (atoms, sand), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:058-deep-time-and-the-story-of-life.lesson:3
# text = Some atoms are radioactive and slowly change into other atoms at a steady rate, like sand falling through an hourglass.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 058-deep-time-and-the-story-of-life.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	2	det	_	_
2	atoms	atom	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	radioactive	radioactive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	change	change	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=4:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
8	into	into	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	atoms	atom	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	steady	steady	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	rate	rate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
19	through	through	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	hourglass	hourglass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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** | present | some atoms |  |  |  |  | radioactive *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **change** | present | some atoms *not said here* |  |  |  |  | into other atoms *result*; at a steady rate; slowly *property* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP.patient V PP.result»: agent=Patient into atom=Result |
| 3 | **fall** | gerund | sand |  |  | a hourglass |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through hourglass=Location |

<!-- .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:058-deep-time-and-the-story-of-life.lesson:3`.

**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): R8-pos-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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