---
title: Many peoples tell flood stories, and the rivers of Mesopotamia reall… — Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing · tree and pragmatics
description: Many peoples tell flood stories, and the rivers of Mesopotamia really did flood badly. Who acts: Many peoples, rivers. 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 21

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Many peoples tell flood stories, and the rivers of Mesopotamia really did flood badly.

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**Who acts:** Many peoples, rivers · **What happens:** tell, flood · **To what, where:** flood stories · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Many peoples, rivers), 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:21
# text = Many peoples tell flood stories, and the rivers of Mesopotamia really did flood badly.
# 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): R2-punct-next ×1
1	Many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	peoples	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	flood	flood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	Agree=R2-punct-next|Haiku=3:punct
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	rivers	river	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	Mesopotamia	Mesopotamia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
12	really	really	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
13	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	flood	flood	VERB	VB	_	3	conj	_	_
15	badly	badly	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	14	advmod	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | Many peoples | flood stories |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |
| 2 | **flood** | past · do-support | the rivers of Mesopotamia |  |  |  |  | badly *property* | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

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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:21`.

**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): R2-punct-next ×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/).

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- ← previous: [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ…, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/20/)
- next →: [Mesopotamia: wheels, laws and empires, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/4-mesopotamia-wheels-laws-and-empires/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/)