---
title: The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a r… — Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing · tree and pragmatics
description: The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a real ziggurat in Babylon. Who acts: real ziggurat. 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 every clause.
---

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# Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a real ziggurat in Babylon.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** real ziggurat · **What happens:** inspire · **To what, where:** story

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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 (real ziggurat), 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:17
# text = The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a real ziggurat in Babylon.
# 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): R8-pos-agree ×2
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Bible	Bible	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	Tower	Tower	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=4:nmod|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	Babel	Babel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=7:nmod|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux:pass	_	_
11	probably	probably	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	inspired	inspire	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
13	by	by	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	real	real	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	ziggurat	ziggurat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	Babylon	Babylon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	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 | **inspire** | past · passive | a real ziggurat in Babylon | the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel |  |  |  | probably *property* | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus subject=Experiencer |

<!-- .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: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): R8-pos-agree ×2. **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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