---
title: Spices were expensive in medieval Europe but not usually worth their… — Trade: why people swap, and the great trade routes · tree and pragmatics
description: Spices were expensive in medieval Europe but not usually worth their weight in gold, and they were not used to hide rotten meat. Who acts: Spices. A sentence of the lesson «Trade: why people swap, and the great trade routes» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and
---

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# Trade: why people swap, and the great trade routes, sentence 21

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Spices were expensive in medieval Europe but not usually worth their weight in gold, and they were not used to hide rotten meat.

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**Who acts:** Spices · **What happens:** be, not be, not use, hide · **To what, where:** medieval Europe, weight, gold, Spices, rotten meat

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Trade: why people swap, and the great trade routes» 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 (Spices), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:070-trade-why-people-swap-and-the-great-trade-routes.lesson:21
# text = Spices were expensive in medieval Europe but not usually worth their weight in gold, and they were not used to hide rotten meat.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 070-trade-why-people-swap-and-the-great-trade-routes.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): R3-conj-first ×1
1	Spices	spice	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	expensive	expensive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	medieval	medieval	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	Europe	Europe	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
9	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	worth	worth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	weight	weight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	gold	gold	NOUN	JJ	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
17	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
18	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux:pass	_	_
19	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	20	advmod	_	_
20	used	use	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=10:conj
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	hide	hide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	advcl	_	_
23	rotten	rotten	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	meat	meat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obj	_	_
25	.	.	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 | **is** | past | Spices |  |  | medieval Europe |  | expensive *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **be** |  | Spices *not said here* | Spices's weight |  | gold |  | usually *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **use** | past · passive |  | Spices *= spice* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 4 | **hide** | to-infinitive |  | rotten meat |  |  |  |  | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent meat=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:070-trade-why-people-swap-and-the-great-trade-routes.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): R3-conj-first ×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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