--- title: Over the city rose a ziggurat, a stepped tower of mud brick, and the… — Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing · tree and pragmatics description: Over the city rose a ziggurat, a stepped tower of mud brick, and the Sumerians wrote down stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories in the world. Who acts: Sumerians. A sentence of the lesson «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing» of the history course of Mova's primary scho --- [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/8/) [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/) / 8 # Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing, sentence 8 Over the city rose a ziggurat, a stepped tower of mud brick, and the Sumerians wrote down stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories in the world. **Who acts:** Sumerians · **What happens:** rise, step, write down · **To what, where:** ziggurat, city, stories 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 (Sumerians), 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:8 # text = Over the city rose a ziggurat, a stepped tower of mud brick, and the Sumerians wrote down stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories in the world. # 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): R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1 1 Over over ADP IN _ 3 case _ _ 2 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 3 det _ _ 3 city city NOUN NN Number=Sing 4 obl _ _ 4 rose rise VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 5 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 6 det _ _ 6 ziggurat ziggurat NOUN NN Number=Sing 4 obj _ _ 7 , , PUNCT , _ 10 punct _ _ 8 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 10 det _ _ 9 stepped step VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 10 amod _ _ 10 tower tower NOUN NN Number=Sing 6 appos _ _ 11 of of ADP IN _ 13 case _ _ 12 mud mud NOUN NN Number=Sing 13 compound _ _ 13 brick brick NOUN NN Number=Sing 10 nmod _ _ 14 , , PUNCT , _ 18 punct _ _ 15 and and CCONJ CC _ 18 cc _ _ 16 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 17 det _ _ 17 Sumerians Sumerian PROPN NNPS Number=Plur 18 nsubj _ _ 18 wrote write VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 4 conj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:parataxis 19 down down ADP RP _ 18 compound:prt _ _ 20 stories story NOUN NNS Number=Plur 18 obj _ _ 21 like like ADP IN _ 23 case _ _ 22 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 23 det _ _ 23 Epic epic PROPN NNP Number=Sing 20 nmod _ Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=20:nmod|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing 24 of of ADP IN _ 25 case _ _ 25 Gilgamesh Gilgamesh PROPN NNP Number=Sing 23 nmod _ _ 26 , , PUNCT , _ 27 punct _ _ 27 one one NUM CD NumForm=Word|NumType=Card 23 appos _ _ 28 of of ADP IN _ 31 case _ _ 29 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 31 det _ _ 30 oldest old ADJ JJS Degree=Sup 31 amod _ _ 31 stories story NOUN NNS Number=Plur 27 nmod _ _ 32 in in ADP IN _ 34 case _ _ 33 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 34 det _ _ 34 world world NOUN NN Number=Sing 31 nmod _ _ 35 . . PUNCT . _ 4 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **rise** | past | | a ziggurat | | the city | | | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location ziggurat=Theme | | 2 | **step** | participle | | | | | | | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme | | 3 | **write down** | past | the Sumerians | stories | | | | like the Epic of Gilgamesh | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent story=Theme | 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:8`. **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): R7-rel-agree ×1, 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…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/7/) - next →: [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ…, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/9/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/)