---
title: Chinese writing never became an alphabet: it uses thousands of chara… — How writing began: from tally marks and pictures… · tree and pragmatics
description: Chinese writing never became an alphabet: it uses thousands of characters, and a reader needs about three thousand of them for a newspaper, while English needs 26 letters. Who acts: Chinese writing, alphabet, reader, English. A sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures
---

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# How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Chinese writing never became an alphabet: it uses thousands of characters, and a reader needs about three thousand of them for a newspaper, while English needs 26 letters.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Chinese writing, alphabet, reader, English · **What happens:** not become, use, need · **To what, where:** alphabet, thousands, three thousand, 26 letters

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Chinese writing, alphabet, reader, English), 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:20
# text = Chinese writing never became an alphabet: it uses thousands of characters, and a reader needs about three thousand of them for a newspaper, while English needs 26 letters.
# 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): R5-strong ×1
1	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	alphabet	alphabet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	xcomp	_	_
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	uses	use	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
10	thousands	thousand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	characters	character	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	reader	reader	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
17	needs	need	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
18	about	about	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
19	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	20	compound	_	_
20	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	17	obj	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nmod	_	_
23	for	for	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	newspaper	newspaper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	29	punct	_	_
27	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	29	mark	_	_
28	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	29	nsubj	_	_
29	needs	need	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:advcl
30	26	26	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	31	nummod	_	_
31	letters	letter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	obj	_	_
32	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **not** **become** | past | Chinese writing | a alphabet |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **use** | present | alphabet | thousands of characters |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thousand=Patient |
| 3 | **need** | present | a reader | three thousand of characters |  |  |  | for a newspaper | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot thousand=Theme |
| 4 | **need** | present | English | 26 letters |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot letter=Theme |

<!-- .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:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:20`.

**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): R5-strong ×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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