--- title: Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks;… — Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing · tree and pragmatics description: Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks; the word cuneiform means wedge-shaped. Who acts: Scribes, word. A sentence of the lesson «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/13/) [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/) / [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/) / 13 # Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing, sentence 13 Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks; the word cuneiform means wedge-shaped. **Who acts:** Scribes, word · **What happens:** press, make, shape, mean · **To what, where:** cut reed, wet clay, shaped marks This is a sentence of the lesson «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing» 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 (Scribes, word), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:history:003-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing.lesson:13 # text = Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks; the word cuneiform means wedge-shaped. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = history # lesson = 003-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing.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): R5-strong ×3, R8-pos-agree ×1 1 Scribes scribe NOUN NNS Number=Plur 2 nsubj _ _ 2 pressed press VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 3 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 5 det _ _ 4 cut cut ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 5 amod _ _ 5 reed reed NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obj _ _ 6 into into ADP IN _ 8 case _ _ 7 wet wet ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 8 amod _ _ 8 clay clay NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obl _ _ 9 , , PUNCT , _ 10 punct _ _ 10 making make VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 2 advcl _ _ 11 wedge wedge NOUN NN Number=Sing 13 compound _ _ 12 - - PUNCT HYPH _ 13 punct _ _ 13 shaped shape VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 14 amod _ Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=14:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos 14 marks mark NOUN NNS Number=Plur 10 obj _ _ 15 ; ; PUNCT , _ 19 punct _ _ 16 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 17 det _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=18:det 17 word word NOUN NN Number=Sing 19 nsubj _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=18:compound 18 cuneiform cuneiform NOUN NN Number=Sing 17 appos _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=19:nsubj 19 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 2 parataxis _ _ 20 wedge wedge NOUN NN Number=Sing 22 compound _ _ 21 - - PUNCT HYPH _ 22 punct _ _ 22 shaped shaped ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 19 xcomp _ _ 23 . . PUNCT . _ 2 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} - form: statement - act: assert - voice: narrator - polarity: none - teacher: kept the draft | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **press** | past | Scribes | a cut reed | | wet clay | | | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent reed=Theme | | 2 | **make** | gerund | Scribes *not said here* | shaped marks | | | | | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset mark=Product | | 3 | **shape** | participle | | | | | | | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset | | 4 | **mean** | present | the word | | | | | shaped *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | 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. **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:003-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing.lesson:13`. **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): R5-strong ×3, 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/). - ← previous: [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/12/) - next →: [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/15/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/)