---
title: The story that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned is a myth; t… — Rome: the empire, the legions and the roads · tree and pragmatics
description: The story that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned is a myth; the fiddle had not even been invented. Who acts: Nero, Rome, story. A sentence of the lesson «Rome: the empire, the legions and the roads» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of 
---

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# Rome: the empire, the legions and the roads, sentence 8

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The story that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned is a myth; the fiddle had not even been invented.

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**Who acts:** Nero, Rome, story · **What happens:** play, burn, be, not invent · **To what, where:** story, myth, fiddle

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Rome: the empire, the legions and the roads» 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 (Nero, Rome, story), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:014-rome-the-empire-the-legions-and-the-roads.lesson:8
# text = The story that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned is a myth; the fiddle had not even been invented.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 014-rome-the-empire-the-legions-and-the-roads.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	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	5	obj	_	_
4	Nero	Nero	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	played	play	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	fiddle	fiddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	Rome	Rome	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	burned	burn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	myth	myth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
14	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	fiddle	fiddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
17	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
18	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	21	advmod	_	_
19	even	even	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
20	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	21	aux:pass	_	_
21	invented	invent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	parataxis	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | past | Nero | the story |  |  |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V NP.beneficiary NP»: agent=Agent that=Beneficiary fiddle=Theme |
| 2 | **burn** | past | Rome |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location |
| 3 | **is a** | present | the story | a myth |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **not** **invent** | past · perfect · passive |  | the fiddle |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Result |

<!-- .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:history:014-rome-the-empire-the-legions-and-the-roads.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): 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/).

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