---
title: Fossil fuels are non-renewable: they took millions of years to form… — Coal, oil and gas · tree and pragmatics
description: Fossil fuels are non-renewable: they took millions of years to form and we are using them up in centuries. Who acts: Fossil fuels, fuels, we. A sentence of the lesson «Coal, oil and gas» of the geography course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Coal, oil and gas, sentence 17

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Fossil fuels are non-renewable: they took millions of years to form and we are using them up in centuries.

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**Who acts:** Fossil fuels, fuels, we · **What happens:** be, take, form, use up · **To what, where:** millions

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Coal, oil and gas» 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 fuels, fuels, we), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:geography:059-coal-oil-and-gas.lesson:17
# text = Fossil fuels are non-renewable: they took millions of years to form and we are using them up in centuries.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = geography
# lesson = 059-coal-oil-and-gas.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 ×1
1	Fossil	fossil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	fuels	fuel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	non-renewable	non-renewable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
8	millions	million	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	form	form	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=7:cc
14	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	using	use	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	conj	_	_
17	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	up	up	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	centuries	century	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | Fossil fuels |  |  |  |  | non-renewable *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **take** | past | fuels *= fuel* | millions of years |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent million=Theme |
| 3 | **form** | to-infinitive | fuels *= fuel* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **use up** | present · progressive | we | millions *= million* |  |  | century |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient |

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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:059-coal-oil-and-gas.lesson:17`.

**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 ×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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