---
title: They had no writing as we know it, but kept records with knotted str… — The Aztecs and the Inca · tree and pragmatics
description: They had no writing as we know it, but kept records with knotted strings called quipu. Who acts: neighbours, we, knotted strings. A sentence of the lesson «The Aztecs and the Inca» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aztecs and the Inca, sentence 5

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They had no writing as we know it, but kept records with knotted strings called quipu.

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**Who acts:** neighbours, we, knotted strings · **What happens:** have, know, keep, knot, call · **To what, where:** writing, records, quipu · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Aztecs and the Inca» 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 (neighbours, we, knotted strings), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:019-the-aztecs-and-the-inca.lesson:5
# text = They had no writing as we know it, but kept records with knotted strings called quipu.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 019-the-aztecs-and-the-inca.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	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	records	record	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	knotted	knot	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	amod	_	_
15	strings	string	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	_
16	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	acl	_	_
17	quipu	quipu	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	xcomp	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **have** | past | neighbours *= neighbour* | no writing |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent writing=Patient |
| 2 | **know** | present | we | writing |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 3 | **keep** | past | neighbours *= neighbour* *not said here* | records |  |  |  | with knotted strings | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent record=Theme |
| 4 | **knot** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn tape-22.4 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 5 | **call** | participle | knotted strings *not said here* | quipu |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:019-the-aztecs-and-the-inca.lesson:5`.

**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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