---
title: The rebus trick uses a picture for its sound: a bee and a leaf can s… — How writing began: from tally marks and pictures… · tree and pragmatics
description: The rebus trick uses a picture for its sound: a bee and a leaf can spell «belief». Who acts: rebus trick, bee. A sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of eve
---

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# How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 11

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The rebus trick uses a picture for its sound: a bee and a leaf can spell «belief».

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**Who acts:** rebus trick, bee · **What happens:** use, spell · **To what, where:** picture, belief

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet» 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 (rebus trick, bee), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:11
# text = The rebus trick uses a picture for its sound: a bee and a leaf can spell «belief».
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	rebus	rebus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	uses	use	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	picture	picture	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	bee	bee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	leaf	leaf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
16	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	spell	spell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj
18	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	_
19	belief	belief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	19	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=4:punct
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **use** | present | the rebus trick | a picture |  |  |  | for trick's sound | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP PP.predicate»: agent=Agent picture=Theme for sound=Eventuality |
| 2 | **spell** | can | a bee and a leaf | belief |  |  |  |  | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Agent belief=Theme |

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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:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:11`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-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/).

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