---
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 called cuneiform. Who acts: Scribes, shaped marks. 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 6

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Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks called cuneiform.

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**Who acts:** Scribes, shaped marks · **What happens:** press, make, call · **To what, where:** cut reed, wet clay, shaped marks, cuneiform · **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 (Scribes, shaped marks), 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:6
# text = Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks called cuneiform.
# 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	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	shaped	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	marks	mark	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
15	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	acl	_	_
16	cuneiform	cuneiform	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	xcomp	_	_
17	.	.	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 | **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 | **call** | participle | shaped marks *not said here* | cuneiform |  |  |  |  | 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:003-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing.lesson:6`.

**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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