---
title: Nobody knows exactly when language began, but early humans talked, s… — The first people: hunters, gatherers and cave pa… · tree and pragmatics
description: Nobody knows exactly when language began, but early humans talked, sang and told stories. Who acts: Nobody, language, early humans. A sentence of the lesson «The first people: hunters, gatherers and cave painters» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragma
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/17/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / [The first people: hunters, gatherers a…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/) / 17

# The first people: hunters, gatherers and cave painters, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Nobody knows exactly when language began, but early humans talked, sang and told stories.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Nobody, language, early humans · **What happens:** know, begin, talk, sing, tell · **To what, where:** stories · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «The first people: hunters, gatherers and cave painters» of the history 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 (Nobody, language, early humans), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:001-the-first-people.lesson:17
# text = Nobody knows exactly when language began, but early humans talked, sang and told stories.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 001-the-first-people.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): no change
1	Nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
2	knows	know	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	exactly	exactly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
5	language	language	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	early	early	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	humans	human	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	talked	talk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
16	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present | Nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **begin** | past | language |  |  |  |  | exactly *property* | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 3 | **talk** | past | early humans |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | early humans *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | early humans *not said here* | stories |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:history:001-the-first-people.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): no change. **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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [The first people: hunters, gatherers a…, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/16/)
- next →: [The first people: hunters, gatherers a…, 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/18/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/)