---
title: Boys, and a few girls, learned to write at tablet-houses, and some p… — Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing · tree and pragmatics
description: Boys, and a few girls, learned to write at tablet-houses, and some practice tablets survive with mistakes and complaints about strict teachers. Who acts: Boys, practice tablets. A sentence of the lesson «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing» of the history course of Mova's primary school with i
---

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# Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing, sentence 15

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Boys, and a few girls, learned to write at tablet-houses, and some practice tablets survive with mistakes and complaints about strict teachers.

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**Who acts:** Boys, practice tablets · **What happens:** learn, write, survive · **To what, where:** tablet houses

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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 (Boys, practice tablets), 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:15
# text = Boys, and a few girls, learned to write at tablet-houses, and some practice tablets survive with mistakes and complaints about strict teachers.
# 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): no change
1	Boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	girls	girl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	conj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
8	learned	learn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	write	write	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	tablet	tablet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	_
14	houses	house	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
17	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	19	det	_	_
18	practice	practice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	tablets	tablet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	survive	survive	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
21	with	with	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	mistakes	mistake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
24	complaints	complaint	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	conj	_	_
25	about	about	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	strict	strict	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	teachers	teacher	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	nmod	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	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 | **learn** | past | Boys and a few girls |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **write** | to-infinitive | Boys and a few girls *not said here* |  |  | tablet houses |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **survive** | present | some practice tablets |  |  |  |  | with mistakes and complaints about strict teachers | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:003-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing.lesson:15`.

**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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